Jesus for Fangirls

“Oh, no, no, you don’t have to worry about training me! I know all your moves, your crime-fighting style, favourite catchphrases, everything! I’m your number one fan!”

The Incredibles (2004)

 

Look, a fan. A well-worn pun, but I still like it.

If you give the matter a little thought, following Jesus is rather like belonging to the world’s biggest fandom.

There is a canonical collection of literature, with which all fans are obsessed, frequently reading and re-reading it, as well as consuming non-canonical extras produced by other fans: additional literature, video, visual arts, and an entire subgenre of music have all been spawned.¹ Fans agonise over tiny details of canon and are angered by inaccurate interpretations of it in other media. They may even factionalise over their differing opinions.² Some fans elevate themselves as ‘true fans’, dismissing others as failing to meet certain criteria they feel it is necessary to meet in order to belong to the fandom; other fans find such elitist behaviour repulsive. There are headcanons³ and fan theories of varying levels of apparent craziness; there are references and in-jokes and hilarious memes.⁴ Fans regularly meet up to discuss their obsession, occasionally at large-scale events where they may hear from or interact with individuals who are particularly admired among the fans. Some fans choose to display their obsession by adorning themselves with related apparel, or even tattoos; some may decorate their homes in a manner indicative of their fandom. There are fans who name their children after their favourite characters.

Fans may find it difficult to hold a conversation without making reference to their obsession at some point, much to the chagrin of the non-fans they know: most fans will encounter, at some stage, non-fans who think they are completely mad to give over so much time to their obsession, to spend so much money on it, to plough so much effort into it. Such encounters sadden the fans; they wish everyone understood the awesomeness of their obsession, that it is worth everything they have sacrificed for it and more. Still, there are always fellow-fans at hand for comfort. Friendships are begun and pursued because of the shared obsession of both parties, and indeed, sometimes fans may feel that only among fellow-fans are they really understood. Even if some of the fandom’s members seem like total lunatics and weirdos, the common obsession prevents that from mattering. When the world outside simply fails to get it, the fandom is a safe haven.

The key difference with Christianity, however, is, of course, that we are obsessed not with fiction, but what we believe is reality. Other fans can only fantasise about having a relationship with their favourite character; in our case, it’s the whole point of being a fan. Other fans may visit attractions or shooting locations⁵ to create an illusion of inhabiting a world they wish was real; we believe we really will one day dwell in the wondrous universe we have read about. Other fans yearn to experience the same adventures as their heroes; we are called to do exactly that, every single day.⁶

In light of which, my question is this: why am I not more excited?

Around the world right now are people spending thousands of pounds on cosplay outfits, convention tickets, limited-edition memorabilia – yet I watch a modest monthly direct debit transfer from my bank account to my church’s with grudging eyes. There are people spending whole days devouring episode upon episode of beloved TV dramas, and staying up so late that it’s early in a desperate attempt to finish the latest book of their favourite series – yet I am unbothered to motivate myself even to open my Bible for more than a few minutes a day. There are people painstakingly planning long-distance trips centred around the faintest possibility of meeting one of their heroes – yet I prefer a few more minutes under the duvet to freely-given quality time with him who is the greatest of all heroes.

I’m not trying to guilt-trip anyone; that would be completely missing the point I’m trying to make. Nobody belongs to a fandom out of a sense of guilt or obligation. People belong to fandoms because they have deep and unshakeable obsessions with things they genuinely think are amazing and worthy of their admiration. I claim that my God is more worthy of admiration, indeed of worship, with the whole of my heart and soul and mind and strength; if my life is failing to display such qualities as would suggest that I really believe that, attempting to cultivate those qualities, cut off from the very belief that is their source, is not going to help. Rather, I need to remind myself why I believe it in the first place. I need to rekindle my obsession.

Any page of that canonical literature I mentioned earlier will do, but why not arbitrarily try a little Psalm 103?

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger for ever.

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.⁷

Now read it again. And think. ‘Abounding’? That’s full to overflowing, running over on all sides, positively saturated with the stuff – and where’s that all going? ‘Towards those who fear him’. How brilliant is that? And what if I’ve not been so great at fearing him? Well, steadfast love has that sorted as well, because the other half of the statement is that he’s flung my wrongdoing as far away from me as the east is from the west – which is, since we live on a spherical planet, a literally infinite distance. ‘Merciful and gracious’? You’re not kidding! And God’s anger is minimised from both directions, being both slow to form in the first place and having a definite endpoint – and even then, ‘he does not deal with us according to our sins’…

…and if I keep going like that for long enough, I’m bound to end up collapsing, from my subject-matter’s sheer weight of brilliance, into a Tumblr-esque keyboard-slam⁸ – translated in the Jesus fandom as ‘Hallelujah’, that is, ‘praise the Lord’.

But, even so, nursing an obsession alone is no fun. And so I beg this of you, my fellow-believers: let’s take a lesson, much as the notion may startle you, from the fandoms. If we truly share the greatest obsession in all creation, why is it that, at the end of a church service, we opt for the same kind of small talk we could have with anyone, rather than taking the opportunity to fully nerd out? Why do we not revel in the fact that we know others who share our obsession? Why do we not enthuse about it for hours on end, fidgeting from excitement and helplessly grinning and occasionally making those random noises of sheer delight which it is impossible to convey using any normal alphabet? Spending time obsessing over something in a group tends to be an even more effective way of fuelling the obsession than doing so alone, and I believe the same applies when that obsession is Jesus Christ.

If you give the matter a little thought, following Jesus is rather like belonging to the world’s biggest fandom. Which being the case, shouldn’t we act like rather bigger fans?

Footnotes

¹ If you’re unfamiliar with the notion of fandoms spawning music genres, I offer as an example the band Chameleon Circuit: http://chameleoncircuit.bandcamp.com/. Time Lord rock, or trock, is, as you can probably guess, the generic term for music based on Doctor Who. (My personal favourite song is ‘Nightmares’.)

² An example from the fandom world would be the whole Team Edward/Team Jacob rivalry, though Twilight seems, thankfully, to have rather disappeared off the map of late. Its Honest Trailers are still hilarious, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gugBiEkLwU&list=PLFWHlH4koGZAhobuak9fftvS1Do3j90OC.

³ It’s a term that has yet to appear in most dictionaries, but Wiktionary defines it as ‘elements or interpretations of a fictional universe accepted by an individual fan, but not found within or supported by the official canon’, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/headcanon. While the Bible does not, of course, represent a fictional universe, people have been devising interpretations that aren’t explicitly contained within the canon for literally thousands of years. As just one random example, there’s a headcanon, espoused (according to Wikipedia, so don’t take it as gospel) by Origen and Martin Luther, for instance, that the ‘commander of the army of the Lord’ in Joshua 5 is Jesus. See what you think: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=joshua+5&version=NIVUK.

⁴ The Christian Memes Facebook page is, in my opinion, one of the most downright hilarious corners of the whole Internet: https://www.facebook.com/MemesForJesus/?fref=ts.

⁵ For instance, sections of Series 2 of Broadchurch were filmed on my university campus, which meant that watching it was a distinctly weird experience. It’s an extremely good programme, though; here’s a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isToG5_U1Ug.

⁶ “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14&version=NIVUK.

⁷ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+103&version=ESVUK. Go on, it’s a good ’un.

⁸ As I understand it from my Tumblr-using friends, the keyboard-slam is employed when one is completely overcome by emotion or lost for words, and is literally the result of randomly slamming the keyboard – ktxdfgylyxt, or similar.