We are not Freaks

This weekend I was in a different city, and spent my usual time walking in a mall, because of rain. The community I encountered was ethnically diverse, and as is often the case in malls, represented a fair cross section of class, physical ability, and even degrees and types of aging. When you have a Target, a Nordstroms, and a movie theater opposite a major hospital complex all kinds of people are there.

All kinds of very normal people. People like all the people I meet on the university campus where I work, at the church where I worship, and the boat club where I waste my time. Or engage in worthwhile recreation as you wish.

I didn’t meet a single freak. I don’t think I’ve ever met a freak.

But when I turn on the TV, or read the Washington Post, or the Dallas Morning News, or look at Facebook I see freaks. Pop-eyed men and women with contorted faces. Red-faced bawlers, robo-cops with steel covered faces, bizarre avatars, shadows branded by political tattoos, distorted limbs carrying hollow cheeks with hollow stares. Hour after hour, page after page of freaks. Right wing freaks, left wing freaks, conservative freaks, progressive freaks, evangelical freaks, Pentecostal freaks, freaks in clerical collars, freaks in suits, freaks in haute couture, freaks in kitchens. Supermodel freaks, super ugly freaks. But still freaks.

All the normal people I meet every day never seem to be make it to either the major media outlets or even their alternative doppelgängers. All those people in the malls, the churches, the clubs, the civic service groups, the schools: they don’t seem to make the news or social media reposts. Or maybe its just that face to face no human is a freak.

Now its easy to blame the media for this, accusing them of running a freak show. But they wouldn’t run the freak show if we didn’t line up to step inside the tent. And at least on social media we, the facebookers, instagramers, tweeters, whatsappers are running the show.

Its an interesting question why we want to represent ourselves as Americans to ourselves as Americans this way. Why, given our vast normalcy, normalcy in many shapes and forms and interests and loves and fears for sure, but still normal, do we focus on the extremists and the extreme moments?

Part of this may be human nature. We have evolved to notice extremes because this is where danger and need are greatest. Turn someone into a freak and it gets our attention, like violence, and thus draws us in to the places where products are being sold.

But Christian preachers have played their own role. I was raised on gospel preaching that consistently raised the emotional temperature by calling on the human extremes. It reveled in the conversion of murderers, adulterers, drug addicts, and gang members. It rejoiced in the pathos when the physically disabled were displayed for healing. The spectacle of tortured souls in hell, twisted with their well-deserved pain was always on call as a warning to the unrepentant, as were vividly described scenes of a violent and sudden death that might transport even the youngest straight to those fires.

And I was raised in the Methodist and then UMC. But in the South that old time religion, that feeling-fueled effort to get an equally emotional response, was everywhere, including Methodist churches.

Preaching, especially revival preaching was frequently its own kind of freak show. And it helped create, maybe still creates, the cultural taste for freaks that the media feeds. Certainly it validates it.

Its time for Christians to put a stop to that, indeed to resist from all sides the media/social media freak show. I’ve started in my own little way. Does the TV news lead with a freak? I turn it off. Does someone repost a freak on facebook? I turn them off (30 days first, then permanently). Does the Post, or the Times, or the DMN show humans contorted with outrage or anguish or grief? I skip to the next story. I don’t need bludgeoned in order to know that there are injustices to be righted and hearts to be healed. People don't need to be displayed as freaks for us to get it. They don't need to be dehumanized to inspire us to be humane.

And then I walk out of my house, out of my office, out of my car and look around at the mall, the church, the scout troop, the boat club, the library.

Because that is where we are and who we are.

Recently I’ve been block-walking to get out the vote for local political candidate. Made me nervous because I’ve heard so much about our “highly charged” political environment. But guess what? I've now talked to more than 100 people, and knocked on way more doors. I meet some supporters of my candidate. I meet a few who support the other guy. No one has shouted at me, yelled obscenities, or even objected to my knocking at their door. Last week three supporters of our opponent thanked me for my service to democracy.

We are not freaks.