My First Crack At Relating "Hook" to Important Things

Back in 1991, Steven Spielberg directed a film titled Hook starring Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, Maggie Smith, and the incomparable Dustin Hoffman as Captain Jas. Hook.  John Williams produced the soundtrack (to which I am currently listening).  Hook provides an intriguing twist on an extremely original tale, and I submit that the title is purposefully misleading.  The first line of J.M. Barrie's book, Peter Pan, states "All children, except one, grow up."  Hook begs the question, "What if that one grew up?"  Maintaining indefatigable continuity with the book, Peter (Robin Williams) comes to what we might call Reality and begins to grow old.  In the way that Neverland makes one forget about Reality, Reality makes one forget about Neverland.  Thus, there is a tension between the two.

The movie opens with Peter's complete consummation by Reality.  He appears as a successful lawyer who orchestrates business deals involving vasts amounts of money.  Nevertheless, his drive for success marginalizes his family.  On a family trip to England in order to visit "Grandma Wendy" (Maggie Smith) and after a mysterious Capt. Jas. Hook breaks into Wendy's home to kidnap Peter's two children, Maggie and Jack, Wendy reveals to Peter and to us who his true identity is, the Peter Pan.  Of course, he finds this completely preposterous, but when Tinker Bell (Julia Roberts) appears and drags him to Neverland, he must face the reality of his forgotten childhood.

In Neverland, Captain James Hook is furious.  Made clear by the film, Hook has been stewing for years over the absence of his "great and worthy opponent" Peter Pan.  Now, Hook, with Peter's kidnapped children in tow, will finally be able to launch his full out war on Peter and his lost boys.  Quite naturally, Peter Banning, whom Peter Pan has grown up to be, enters Neverland completely ignorant of his lost identity.  Confused by such a goofy world that is Neverland with its pirates, mermaids, and renegade, pirate-killing orphans, Peter halfheartedly attempts self-discovery for the sake of saving his children.  In the meanwhile, Hook turns Peter's son against him, and in normal Neverland fashion, Jack forgets about home.  As Jack forgets, Peter remembers; except, he remembers with a twist.  He remembers who he is, not because he recalls the features of Neverland, he remembers Neverland and his identity as Peter Pan because he recalls the joy he felt when he became a father.  The elation and new life of childhood reignites Peter's ability to fly and battle the incarnate evil, Captain Hook.

Before I finish telling the story, let me turn to the obvious quite obvious message behind this story.  At 2 hours and 20 minutes, Hook can hardly be considered a pure kid's movie (even though I watched it countless times as a child).  Instead, Hook is a film made for parents couched in a kid's film disguise.  As adults, what once carried the excitement of newness for us as kids gives way to the mundane product of experience and recognizable repetition.  Peter who once was capable of thinking imaginatively of newness, becomes bound by the restraint of what he knows.  This is made ever so clear when he tries to save his children by writing Hook a check or when he cannot eat simply because he cannot imagine food.  Hook, therefore, romanticizes childhood in an exciting, entertaining way.  At the same time, Captain Hook reminds us that childhood does not come without difficulties.

These struggles we face as children loomed large to us then.  The film humorously puts it to us in Hook and Peter's discourse as they fight their final battle:

Peter: "I remember you being a lot bigger."
Hook: "To a 10-year-old, I'm huge."

Now, Peter has returned to fight off his old foe once and for all.  Why?  No longer can he avoid it.  See, in Reality, Peter became a pirate with his corporate takeovers and hold-no-prisoners economics.  What happened?  He oppressed his family and his kids.  As a result, his son became a pirate, merciless and tyrannical.  The commentary here is explicit.  As adults, we must face and fight our childhood terrors.  We avoid them because we remember them being huge, but if we stave off the fight, we will become what oppressed us.  Consequently, the next generation will suffer from our Hooks.  Hence, the cycle is created.

Briefly, I would like to implicate the Hebrew Bible.  Clearly, the authors and compilers of Genesis recognized and theologized this cycle.  We can see it as the faithfulness of Abraham passes from generation to generation until Joseph.  Joseph becomes imperial, and he delivers his own people into the hands of the oppressors.  Notice the oddity of Jacob's blessing upon Joseph's two sons in Genesis 48.  Why does Jacob not reach out his hands and bless Joseph in the way Jacob's father did to him?  Jacob attempts to pass on the blessing to those not yet tainted by the oppressive empire.  Furthermore, this whole narrative is alluded to in the second word of the Decalogue in Exodus 20.4-6:

"You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I YHWH your G-d am a jealous G-d, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments."

What we see in Hook is a father's idolization of that which is not the life-giving, creative G-d, and as a result, his children pay for it.  He then confronts that which oppressed him and a child (his idol), and defeated it.  It is to how he defeated it that I now turn.

Upon Peter's self-realization in the film, the pace quickens.  He forgets he is an adult, and he becomes consumed by the desires of being a young boy.  Immediately, the film clarifies.  Peter cannot save his kids if he believes he is a child.  The narrative presents Peter with a dilemma: how does one maintain the innocence of youth and the strength that one gains through the long process of growing up to fight the very demons of that youth?  Or put more metaphorically, how do we stay as big as Captain Hook yet as free as the lost boys?  The film gives us three answers: creativity, community, and evil's inoperable sustainability.

In the film, the Lost Boys are a precarious group of orphans who live under the constant threat of violence from the oppressive adult pirates.  Rendered unable to go where they wish or live as they please, the Lost Boys subvert the authoritarian rule of Hook using only their imagination.  Even eating requires them to utilize their imaginative power.  As a result, beneath the oppressive thumb of Hook and his cronies, the Lost Boys thrive.  Alas, when an adult who finally takes their side leads them in a rebellion against the oppressors, these disenfranchised orphans do not fight in shear numbers.  Instead, they fight with creative tools such as tomato-flinging slingshots, a four-direction paint gun, marbles, mirrors, and an egg-gun.  The plausibility of these weapons being deployed by children actually working against a contingent of armed, full-grown men is inconsequential and irrelevant.  The movie is disinterested in practicality.  Rather, it implies the creative efforts of the oppressed render the confidence of the powerful as a weakness.  Creativity overcomes physical power.

As Peter fights Captain Hook, he receives the aid of the Lost Boys.  Hook, you see, in a wonderful metaphor, fears time more than any other thing.  We see this in Peter's own life before he made it to Neverland.  He frantically attempts to work and support his son by attending his baseball game which Peter tragically misses.  He fights against time.  Captain Hook does likewise.  He finds sport in destroying clocks that tick; thus, reassuring himself that in fact time does not exist.  The film clearly responds to this with the affirmation of time.  When we embrace time as the conduit through which we live, we learn to actually enjoy life, the time we are given, and the people we spend it with.  There is no greater example to this than when Peter fights Hook in the final battle between good and evil.  As their ace in the hole, the Lost Boys pull out ticking clocks.  The over-stimulation of Hook's greatest fear paralyzes him, and the theme is driven home as he stands facing Peter in a circle of Lost Boys without any friends to help.  Peter understands the strength in his friends and family.  Hook, bent on vengeance, cannot allow the aid of his minimal friendships lest his revenge feel anything less than self-earned.  Only through the help of others can we in fact defeat what haunts us most.

The description of that scene leads to my final point.  Evil cannot sustain itself.  The moral logic of oppression leads the oppressor into lonely, self-destruction.  In a gut-wrenching, tear-jerking way, we see this in Rufio.  Rufio is the boy who took control of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan's absence. Dressed like a punk rocker, Rufio acquiesces to Hook's logic.  Hook hauntingly seduces Rufio into a blade-on-blade battle by slowly chanting his name right after Peter forbid Rufio from fighting the old man.  Rufio is shown as a good swordsman, but clearly, he is no match for the superb Captain Hook.  Rufio gives in to the promise of power that can be achieved through the death of Hook.  Effectively, Rufio tries to beat Hook at his own game.  Little does Rufio know, one cannot overcome evil with the tools of evil.  Rufio only realizes this after Hook slays him.  Dying in Peter's arms, Rufio (and I have to hold back tears thinking about it) says to Peter in a powerful last breath, "You know what I wish.  I wish I had a dad...like you."  The film drives the point home when the young Jack takes off his pirate's hat, addresses Peter as "Dad", and tells Peter, who still holds the dying Rufio in his arms, he wants to go home.  Creative, communal love creates home; evil tempts and destroys.  It cannot persist then, for it destroys that which it lures.

We see evil's demise at the conclusion of Peter's final (dare we say, loving) battle with his childhood foe.  The sword fight builds in the very typical way that all sword battles typically do.  Meanwhile, we wait for the very typical end.  We wait for Peter to be given the opportunity to kill Hook, yet in his goodness refuse.  Very surely, this time comes (twice actually), but Peter is rescued by the sweet innocence of his daughter.  Naturally, the next action is Hook trying to kill Peter even though Peter mercifully spared his life.  What we would quite expect is Peter to kill Hook, but this never happens.  Instead, a twist comes.  Peter, with the aid of Tinker Bell, thrusts the Captain's hook into the belly of the crocodile who consumed Hook's hand after Peter cut it off so many years ago.  While this could simply be seen as an homage to the book, the action suggests otherwise.  We see Hook stumble and stand with complete balance.  He seems completely able to avoid the crocodile who has awoken from the dead.  But he doesn't.  Why?  Perhaps it is because Hook longs for death.  Evil cannot endure forever; it cannot bear the weight of oppressing eternally.  Furthermore, evil is not indestructible.  Even it has fears such as time.  In the end, Hook's fear of the crocodile, his exhaustion of being vengeful, and his lost battle against time bring about his demise.  Peter's refusal to kill shows his victory, for he knows that evil will kill itself. 

In the end, we see the beauty of creativity, innocence, and community.  These are not weaknesses.  They are strength.  Unless we learn to embrace them as strength, we will continue to let Captain Hook and his violent, oppressive logic dominate every generation.  However, if we learn how to embrace the time we are given to live and if we enjoy those we are given to live it with, we may well learn to defeat Hook once and for all.  That is exactly what we see in Jesus' life and most clearly in Jesus' death and resurrection.  We cannot beat the oppressors on their own terms.  We can only reveal the natural demise of sin which is death.  We reveal this by showing the natural way of G-d which is life, and as Peter says at the very end of the film, "To live... to live would be an awfully big adventure."

I Am Going to Colombia

At several moments in my life, G-d calls me in such a clear fashion it becomes impossible for me to avoid.  One of these moments happened about a month ago.  This is the brief story of that and the results.

A guy I know named Josh has a sister named Kait.  Kait went to Azusa Pacific University and majored in Social Work.  Following graduation, she moved to Vietnam to take a position with an Australian non-profit called AoG World Relief.  Not long ago, she visited Seattle for a little over a week during which time I discussed the details of her work and listened to many stories of her faithful undertaking.  In Vietnam, she worked doing general relief efforts while building connections with cohorts in order to begin a ministry for the liberation of women and men involved in sex trafficking.  Kait spoke with passion, excitement, and fervor while she exuded the Holy Spirit.  Her visit excited me.

More than excitement, I felt challenge.  The trouble with people practicing radical righteousness is their tendency to expose others' lack of integrity, particularly mine.  I saw in Kait a projection of everything good I wanted to do but was too afraid.  What holds me back?  Why do I stay in Seattle griping about rich, white people, working at a job I cannot stand, pretending as though one day I will be a respectable, Christian man who is known for his love for the oppressed.  Kait's visit exposed my fear.  I spent my life hesitating like those who hesitate to worship Jesus in Matthew 28 yet still receive the same command. 

Laid before me was my unwillingness to go where I feared.  I looked around at those whom I surrounded myself with.  I thought about Kevin and Marian Neuhouser specifically.  My great respect for them grew out of their experiences working among the poor and oppressed in Brazil.  Those times shaped them significantly in an extremely positive way.  My reflections revealed my need to partake in work amongst those who live beneath the heavy hand of empire.  Still, I feared.

Finally, during the first week of Lent, I prepared a sermon on Jesus' temptation in the desert in Luke.  In the sermon (which you can read below), I concluded Lent was a time in which we refuse the temptations that seem to grant us expedient relief or success and do the hard work to rid ourselves of actions that might embody these temptations.  What we give up, then, must be given up forever.  During the writing of that sermon, I felt the enunciation of Kait's challenge to my hesitant, complacent comfort manifest as G-d's ubiquitous command in the Bible, "Do not be afraid."  The command, so clear it was unavoidable, led me to sign up with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).

From May 12-25 I will be in Colombia working with a delegation on behalf of small artisan miners and small farmers in order to maintain their safety and livelihood in the face of a multinational gold-mining corporation who wants to mine on the 3 million acres of land where these people live.  Paramilitary and Colombian military roam the region.  Finally, I am stepping out.  I am going to go do what I know the L-RD requires of me.  Hopefully, this will lead to a full-time, 3-year placement with CPT.  I certainly hope it does.  In any case, I am stepping out without fear, knowing G-d will be with me.  Peace!

-ben adam

Reflections on Walter Wink

On Monday this week, I read, from cover to cover, Walter Wink's The Powers That Be.  I meant to read it for some time now.  Since N.T. Wright populates my entire reading list (I have finished five of his books since December), I decided to interrupt my Wright project with a little liberal theology, and I must say, I loved it.  For the past few days, I reflected on this work, and these are my first few impressions about it.

This book represents a simple summary of Wink's The Powers Trilogy.  Essentially, Wink distilled his scholarly work into an accessible volume for laypeople.  He fulfills what my professor Dr. Rob Wall calls his responsibility to scholasticism and to the Church by doing this.  I appreciate his efforts.

First and foremost, Walter Wink is an activist.  He makes this very clear by telling stories about his days in the Civil Rights Movement in the '60's and his work against South African Apartheid.  Like all writers, Wink responds to the problems he sees in current systems.  More precisely, he writes to give theological weight to the solutions of these problems.  With activism as his platform and theology as his instrument, Wink argues for the Church to commit itself to complete non-violence as a centerpiece of its faith statement.  The lines of his argument are as follows:

The main problems Wink encounters derive out of his activist stance.  He concerns himself with what stands in the way of the effective liberation of those who suffer.  To Wink, the barrier to liberation is, what he calls, The Domination System.  The Domination System is nothing new and can be seen all the way down through history whenever one group of people oppresses another for the sake of greed and self-interest.  Wink realizes The Domination System is an evil, demonic animal which requires sustenance.  The food of this beast grows in the corresponding corollary to The Domination System: The Myth of Redemptive Violence.  The Myth of Redemptive Violence provides The Domination System with a narrative that can be reproduced in an infinite number of ways which convinces all involved in The Domination System (oppressor and oppressed alike) that without The Domination System the world would collapse and only the violence perpetrated by it can save us from this fate.  The Myth looks roughly like this: a powerful being or system has caused harm or distress to a certain other being or group; from within the oppressed group, a powerful being or system arises to defeat and kill the oppressor, ending the reign of terror; as a result, the victorious protagonist becomes the ruling victor who creates a space in which the liberated can live free and in harmony; but eventually, the once righteous liberator becomes the dominating oppressor, beginning the cycle all over again.  This Myth, seen from the Babylonian creation myth to today's children's cartoons, maintains silent ubiquity by coercing its adherents into believing it is normative.  This omnipresence, Wink argues, is so pervasive it even infiltrated the way in which ancient Hebrews conceived of G-d; thus, it produced vast amounts of violence in the Hebrew Bible as the will of G-d.  Jesus interrupts this Myth, and exposes it for what it really is: legalized immorality.  He paints Jesus in an activist light as one who courageously revealed the truth about the one true G-d who has no part in The Domination System.  Oppressive structures killed him for his insolence, and the early Church only half-way understood his purpose.

Hope, for Wink, in the face of The Domination System, comes in a two-step process.  First, Wink holds the worldview that spirit infuses everything.  From the Pentagon to a preschool, spirituality mediates within all structures.  Thus, the spirituality of everything can, as all spirits can, be redeemed.  Some of these things which can be redeemed, such as the law, need simple or complex recreation; some others, such as Nazism, sexism, or racism, require total abandonment.  Our first step in redemption is clothing ourselves in what Wink deems an "Integral Worldview".  Once we recognize this worldview to be the case, the second step in the process of redemption occurs through Divine and human collusion manifested as direct non-violent action against The Domination System.  This, after all, was what Jesus did and what later Christians would fail to understand as they drifted back into oppressive, demonic structures.

My reaction to Wink's argument is both positive and negative.  First, I fully affirm his view of a ubiquitous system of dominance that oppresses others for its own gain and sustains itself through the telling and retelling of an indoctrinating myth that convinces people of its indispensability.  Furthermore, I 100% agree with the conclusion concerning non-violence.  If we employ the logic of the Myth of Redemptive Violence against oppressors, we simply insert ourselves into the cyclical destruction of The Domination System.  Meanwhile, we will fool ourselves into believing we are creating freedom or newness (just as the Myth prophesied we would).  Hence, the only conceivable way to escape the Myth's all-encompassing hold is to step outside its operating parameters and do what it least expects: non-violence.  Jesus, in my perspective, demonstrated this way of life in the most exemplary way.  Wink and I cohere at this point.  Finally, I share Wink's Integral Worldview.  In general, Wink's largest conclusions are those that I affirm.

My dissension with Wink comes in his nuances.  Primarily, we disagree in the extent to which The Domination System must be abandoned.  He states clearly Nazism represented a spirit which should not be redeemed but abandoned.  Whether or not you agree with his worldview, nearly everyone would agree with him on this point.  Nonetheless, the government in the U.S., which has committed genocide against dozens of tribes, afflicted entire people groups under slavery and then Jim Crow, cripples the poor beneath the military-industrial complex, and fights multiple explicit and secret wars around the world, belongs in the category of redeemable which he makes clear by insisting he is a devoted patriot.  I cannot agree with Wink here.  If the purpose of the nation-state exists to defend its artificial borders from would-be assailants, we can see, by observing the U.S. and its hyper-militarized fetish, where such logic takes us.  Nationalism and the good of the state must be abandoned.  Subversive love of G-d and neighbor must replace it.  Secondarily, Wink's biblical scholarship is inconsistent and jumbled.  He writes off the Epistle to the Hebrews as complicit in The Domination System, yet he maintains the authority of some Pauline texts.  He exegetes gospel passages, yet he limits their interpretation to his own agenda.  As a result, Jesus looks less like G-d's decisive act in history to deal with sin (or The Domination System) in its fullness via non-violent activity and more like a failed social activist like Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi who at least understood what the latter two had in mind during their movements.  Consequently, he denies the Trinity, and damages his argument in the process.  Even though I still agree with his final conclusion, by refuting Jesus' divinity, Wink only allows Jesus to be one who teaches us how G-d is.  Instead, by holding Jesus as the second person of the Trinity, we see, in his non-violent, direct action against the powers that be, the very way in which G-d chooses to reveal G-d's self.  Not only, then, would this add theological substance to Wink's argument; it would add an ethical mandate for Christians to follow suit.

Finally, Wink believes the future of Christianity does not lie in debates about salvation and justification but in our ability to live out G-d's all-embracing love through peaceable means.  I believe this to be half true.  All the bickering about who is in and who is out creates a dynamic in which we forget Jesus is Lord, and we recreate him as life-jacket.  Jesus is the King, and it is time we started living by his kingdom edicts.  However, we must have faith that Jesus is Lord.  Faith and obedience are therefore two sides of the same coin which is the Gospel.

How we live this out will eternally be under argument; Wink gives us a useful guide tool.  The Church's days of domination are over.  Time has come for us to pick up our crosses and follow the Lord.  Peace!

-ben adam