To Blog 24 Or Not...

My schedule prevented me from watching live the first two segments of the new 2009 season of 24, so I recorded them on my VCR and watched them a couple days later. Two episodes over two nights, two hours each; I watched the first 4 hours straight through, fast-forwarding past the commercials.

My plan, of course, was to track the body count as each episode transpires, to quantify how much death, damage and mayhem Jack Bauer is able to execute over the entire "24 Hours" of this season. However, I have come to recognize, after these first four hours, that I am not the same Bear I was back in late 2003 when I first blogged the 24 body count.

My focus then was on highlighting just how violent this program was, with my stark accounting of how many people the CTU counter-terrorism agent killed over a single 24-hour period. Along the way I commented on how Bauer was glorified as a terror-fighting champion of modern American folklore. He is the "hero" of the series -- the one guy, we're led to believe, who can save us from all those crazed terrorists who are plotting to bring down our nation and kill as many U.S. citizens as possible. And the way he accomplishes this is to kill as many of the bad guys as he can, any way he is able, without recourse to arrest or trial, and to hell with any nuisance rules of engagement that might get in his way. Were it not for his employment by the U.S. government, he'd qualify as a vigilante, guilty of all the same laws his anti-American foes are supposed to be violating. And yet by virtue of his employment, we instead laud him as the modern American hero. Hmmm... What is it about this assessment that I find so disturbing?

In a word: non-violence. You see, at heart The Bear is a pacifist, a student of the peaceful master, Jesus of Nazareth. And this Jesus, the mythic hero of Christianity, did not raise the sword (or semi-automatic) against his enemies. Instead, he lived a non-violent Way to the dark and dreadful end, even unto death. It is not for us -- the Children of God -- to decide who lives and who dies. The final lesson of that story is that no one truly dies. Though we may appear to suffer death, in the end we are risen, like Jesus who precedes us, to a new life beyond death. We are, ultimately, spirit beings, we have always been with God, and we are perfect as God made us. This temporary mortal life, though its sense of solid physicality is deeply convincing, is nevertheless an adventure of our own making, as much a figment of our own imaginations as our sleeping dreams or waking fantasies.

Furthermore, we all have one divine purpose here which we are destined to fulfill. Our purpose: TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. We have all the time in the universe to accomplish this purpose. We have lived countless lives in the gradual unfurling of this purpose, and so long as we stray from the mark, mistaking all the other goals and desires of a life for our one real purpose, we will experience many more lifetimes in which to discover and live the one purpose for which we have been created. God does not grow weary of any delay on our part, for God is beyond time, and eternity cares not to measure time as we know it. Yet all Creation awaits the fullness of our living purpose: THAT WE LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Which brings us full circle to Jack Bauer and the world of "24". The Bear is five years farther along on the Way of Peace, and frankly this 24 world of violence, blame, fear, terror, and death is just that much less interesting than it once was. Entertaining such thoughts has become foreign. The unsettling emotions that arise from such offensively violent storystelling are not instructive to the Way of Peace, and serve in our minds to confuse and further delay the pursuit of our one purpose: TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Is this world of terrorism and counter-terrorism a realistic depiction of the "real world" as we know it? That depends. It depends on what each of us believes is real. Do you believe in a mortal, physical world, where life exists in a body and everything eventually dies? If so, then the 24 world is an accurate (though grandly exaggerated) depiction of the transitory temporal world you inhabit. The Bear no longer desires to believe in this reality. And whatever we believe, of course, is real to us.

The world of Jack Bauer is no more real than the thought world we all inhabit in our minds, that we inform our individual selves about through sense and perception, that we manufacture and narrate our own personal stories about from day to day. The same power of mind in which God created us is at work within us to create our own reality as we go along.

And so The Bear, desiring to live more than ever in tune with the one purpose we were created for, discovers he is no longer capable of indulging in the "Blogging 24" body count and comment. It misses the mark. It does not extend God's creative impulse. It is not a suitable vessel for love. If you were looking forward to another season of Tame 24 commentary, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I have no regrets. And I know you'll get over it. Peace to you my brothers and sisters -- I LOVE YOU!

Last update: 1/17/09; 3:51:59 PM.