The Ambivalence and the Carrot

I was at dinner a few weeks ago with some friends of a friend and the conversation turned to religion. I’m always a little ambivalent when I’m surrounded by the more religiously conservative; I’m both fascinated by the idea of introducing new concepts, and I’m also weary of being labeled as suspicious or worse, “non-christian.” One woman turns to me and asks, “So, Adam… Are you a Christian?” “Oh?” I said… my ambivalence is palpable. I pause for a moment feeling strangely disappointed: “What do you mean by Christian?” My response was enough to bring suspicion. I rushed into a deconstructive moment illustrating the diversity within a “thing.” How many Christianities are in a Christian? At some expectantly frustrating moment someone furthered the questioning, “Are you Jewish?”

I’m always curious about my own ambivalence toward such questions. I’m never really surprised, but I can feel defensive and a sense of disappointment lingers. I spent countless hours reading and reflecting about the nature of my religious inheritance in the university. It’s disappointing to reduce my passion, my religiosity, and expertise into a sound bite. There is a great joke about hell being a condition where you’re eternally lectured in a subject matter by an idiot that doesn’t know that you’re an expert. An entire world is in a question. What’s a question, but a marker of absence, a lack, a stranger, but also a curiosity and plentiful space for creation. 

I did my best to be accommodating and kind, but here, Jung might say that I need better company or… more skill to find that elusive congruence that I’m seeking. 

I spent too much time in grad school. I didn’t know that the distance between my self-concept and reality grew ever widening as my mind and worldviews enlarged and complexified, racing forward to leave my body and behavior in some late adolescence stage, groping for lost alignment. I should have started with that: “Christianity? Sure whatever you say…” “Just assume I’m a Christian. Christ, who doesn’t love him, right?” I can imagine Jesus’ inquisition and his ambivalence at the ignorance and impatience of his accusers. Maybe this was Jesus’ greatest sin - coming too early. Like Shakespeares Hamlet, speaking in the void, "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!" I like to imagine that at the zenith Christ's grief and fulfillment, at his spiritual peak, it all became comedy for him... at the end of Jesus’ life was a little like what John Gardner’s Grendel realized - it was all a cosmic accident, another moment of absurdity in the light. It’s the postmodern moment in sum. “Are you assuming my gender?” Becomes, “Are you assuming my religiosity?” “Are you assuming our difference?” “Are you an ass?” 

I’ll pivot now to make my point more clear. When I was a carrot things were clear. I got clarity. I was behind the orange-wide-world of “Rooty the Carrot.” I was a carrot mascot and barely employable a little over a decade ago. Here, being a carrot, there was a large distance between my “conscious self-concept and reality,” between the “ideal and the actual.” Awareness of this distance might be my greatest source of pain and sadness and paradoxically my greatest point of humility, willingness, and transformation. Yes, the year prior to my condition as a carrot I had been working on a Ph.D. Now, the only labor I qualified to perform was as a carrot mascot for a farm to door delivery company marketing in the Bay Area. I had spiraled down considerably and landed in a carrot suit, but I found my clear bottom. And by the way, everyone who takes life seriously has a bottom, often multiple bottoms. Experiencing a "bottom" is utterly transformative because of its proximity to actual death. We only call it spiritual after we've lived to tell about it. People often die... that's the tragic reality of a bottom. Which reminds me of a quote that I love by Albert Camus, the existentialist philosopher, “The only serious philosophical question is whether or not to kill yourself.” Yes, it’s morbid. But, it’s also hilarious and utterly serious, because if you can answer that question, and answer enough of it… and practice answering it… that fundamental existential question… the result is an authentic, courageous life, a life worth living despite the ambivalence or even because of it. And here you get to the point of Jesus’ entire ministry: Follow Me. Lay down your life, pick up your cross and follow me. Embrace the bottom, be the carrot, celebrate the ambiguity, because you’re already gone, you’re already dust, you’ve already done all the things. It’s the only game in town worth playing.

Am I a Christian? Well... I guess it depends on the dinner company. There were many more revelations in that carrot suit… and many more to come.