What MTV Taught Me About Jesus
One time a couple years ago my brothers and I sat on a couch in our living room and watching a show on MTV about cliques. This school had the unfortunate problem of being normal and having a serious issue with cliquishness. The parents made a ruckus and so the principle brought in a team that specialized in breaking up cliques. It started with hundreds of these high school kids in a gymnasium, all sitting around looking disdainful and silent. They sat with their like kind, the football players and the cheerleaders, the band kids, the thugs. No one played with the basketballs, those stayed on the floor in the corner, and no one talked above the “whisper chuckle” level. There is no more awkward of a place in the world than a place where the normal daily high school culture. The discomfort is palpable. It's like catching a couple hundred deer in the headlights all at once.
“this place is SO lame, like omg." |
They all seize up, stop moving and look around as if the light will just go away if they act like they don't exist. It's really funny really. Getting them to talk, much less play together takes nothing short of a miracle. But the group that was putting this little retreat on had a few miracles up their sleeve. After they introduced themselves and made a few jokes to lighten the mood, they told the kids they'd be playing a game. After some coaxing, turning on loud music, and offering few cool prizes, they had the kids jumping hopping around on one foot and trying to untie a knot of human arms locked uncomfortably close to one another. I couldn't believe it. Then after the games, they kids sat back down, read faced and smiling. The counselors then one by one got up on the stage and said the following. “Hi, I'm (insert name), and to know me you have to know (insert the most incredibly vulnerable experience of brokenness you've ever heard).” It was pretty wild. One of the guys, Jake, was kind of a hipster looking dude with a handlebar mustache and lots of tattoo’s said “Hi, I'm Jake, and to know me, you have to know that when I was a kid, my dad used to come home drunk and beat me and my mom till we were all shades of blue, green and yellow. My mom used to put makeup on me to hide the bruises.” A girl got up after him. She was really tall, like six foot, really big, but still really pretty. She said, “Hi, I'm Alyson, and to know me, you have to know that I'm a lesbian. The kids spray painted “big fat dike” on my garage door one morning, and I started cutting when I got home that day.” A cheerleader type got up and talked how her mom would make her stand on a scale every day before dinner, and wouldn't let her eat if she weighed any more than 100 lbs. After a while, she just stopped eating entirely.” And then Tyrel stood up and talked about starting to deal drugs so that they could pay the heating bill and his mom, little brother, and little sister wouldn't freeze to death in a Detroit blizzard. Every single one of the counselors came from completely different social groups, dressed different, talked different, but were no less broken. All of them had been really really broken.
When I was in high school, I went on every single retreat my youth group had available. Then after high school I helped put on retreats with a few different churches, and I'd never seen anything like what I saw that day on MTV. We liked to stay at a comfortable level of detachment, where we would touch lightly on our stories of brokenness, but move off them as quickly as possible. It would usually go something like this: “I was going through a really difficult time in my life, like stuff was really bad, you know? I was depressed, and some kids said some things to me that were kind of hurtful, and then I realized that God loved me.” If you ever want to make sure that people walk away from a conversation knowing absolutely nothing more about you, the words “Stuff” and “things” are your two best friends.
“Well, I was struggling with some race stuff and one time...” |
When I was a kid, I imagined heaven like they made it look in the cartoons. A bunch of people floating around on clouds strumming harps.
Pictured above: A place no 6 year old boy ever wants to go. |
Something woke up in me while I was sitting there engulfed in this mystery of human nature happening on a screen. I knew that I wanted to tell my story, because somewhere, someone is hurting the same way I was hurting, and will take comfort in sharing my suffering. We'd share it like a meal, and be healed and freed in its digestion. In that instant, I just wanted to go outside and introduce myself to the first person I saw on the street; and without any pretense or any smokescreen I wanted to say, “hi, my name is Marcellino, and to know me, you have to know that I'm really f*@#*g crazy.
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