Pious Holy Week News Commentary

Pious Holy Week News Commentary April 11, 2017

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[Jesus excited to see what Pepsi will do next.]

Swinging wildly back and forth between a pious desire for the appearance of holiness and devotion on this blog during the holiest and best time for devotion during the whole church year and an uncontrollable desire to comment on the news which keeps delivering up such fantastic moments it’s nigh impossible for me to pass them by.

I mean, that Pepsi ad is such a gift–really the thing we all needed to bring us together. My favorite part was where the beautiful Kardashian Jenner Person flings her wig at the short less lanky person of color. Hahahahaha. And honestly, SNL, which is never worth my time, did a really nice sketch. I know everyone’s already said so many things, but the thing that I wanted to say was Thank You Pepsi, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Following upon which the throwing out of that poor guy off the United plane. This also gives me hope for humanity. Why? you ask. Well, think about it this way. Part of having technology and ease of lifestyle and a first world context where things basically work is the ridiculous idea that maybe human beings are good. When you’re walking down a shiny grocery aisle picking up the things that you want to eat that aren’t going to kill you, and then you go through the line where you can not only easily get change, you can even get change for a big fat bill without having to argue with the check out person about how that’s impossible, you might be inclined to go home and think that you are good and the grocery people are good and all the people are good. But see, that’s just not true. People are bad. The Pepsi Ad and the United Ugliness show all of us how bad we really are.

Let me splain…no wait, there’s too much, let me sum up. See, what’s so beautiful about these two fantastic moments is that they illumine that we are bad and stupid even when (sometimes especially when) we are trying to be good and awesome. Pepsi did not wake up that auspicious morning and say to itself in its tinny multimillion dollar voice, ‘How can I literally offend every single person in the world today?’ They said, ‘How can we get people to buy this gross sugary drink thereby increasing our shareholder whatchamacallit and making all people love us more.” They were trying to do a nice thing.

Likewise, all the people working at United didn’t wake up and think, ‘You know what would be great? Publicly shaming and humiliating and abusing a person who paid us more money than we’re worth for a product we’re not that great at delivering anyway!’

All of us walk around trying to do good from whichever way we perceive that good to be. Gosh, even Hank Hanegraff is trying to be good.

Which is why we can even have the cross. All the people surrounding Jesus in the last week of his life were trying to do the best thing as they saw it. The high priest, confronted with someone claiming to be God, much like Pepsi thinking it’s a great idea to make that dumb commercial, goes with his gut and condemns the Son of Man to death. Pilot, much like all the employees at United, figures the best thing in this case is to get rid of the politically and practically inconvenient. So what if he’s innocent? Don’t answer that question.

And so God, who is not a complete numbskull, is able to take all our ‘good intentions’ which lead us directly into the lap of humiliating evil, to bring about the best good ever, which is the salvation of humanity from itself and all its ‘good works’ and ‘good intentions.’ (Sorry about all the scare quotes.)

And look! I managed to cram my love of news into my love of Holy Week! Truly, I am awesome. Just kidding, I’m not that awesome. But still, you’re welcome.


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