Just in Case

“Just in case.”

Inside Out (2015)

 

How cute is this fanart of Riley’s five emotions? Thanks to the artistic skills of Mondudu at newgrounds.com.

It was probably no more than a second of the film’s runtime: just three little words spoken by a minor character, with no implications at all for the wider plot; a throwaway one-liner intended to raise a giggle or at least a knowing smirk.

I didn’t smile.

If you remember, the premise of Inside Out is that everybody has five little people hanging out in her brain, representatives of the emotions Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust, who between them are in charge of how their human responds to what life throws at her. By far the lion’s share of the story takes place in the mind of protagonist Riley, but we’re given occasional glimpses into other characters’ heads as well, notably Riley’s parents’. Early on in the film, the family is eating dinner together after Riley’s first day at her new school in a new city;¹ her mother realises she’s not her usual buoyant self, and attempts to enlist her husband’s help in trying to figure out why, only to witness her husband turn the whole thing into an absolute car crash by getting cross and sending Riley to her room. “For this, we gave up that Brazilian helicopter pilot?” laments Anger exasperatedly in Riley’s mum’s brain. After Riley stomps upstairs to her room, we get a better look at said Brazilian helicopter pilot, as Riley’s mum’s emotions call up a memory of him to play on the screen of her consciousness. “Come, fly with me, gatinha,” he implores, open-shirted and haloed by sunlight. The emotions, in unison, sigh and smile.

The plot point of this slight marital disharmony is resolved, as plot points tend to be, at the end of the film, when Riley’s parents attend an ice hockey match in which she is competing.² Riley’s dad had the idea that they should make themselves up in Riley’s team colours, and her mum was a fan of the suggestion. “Best idea he’s had in a while,” approves Anger in her brain. “He’s a really good guy,” agrees Sadness. Once again, in unison, the emotions sigh and smile. Anger picks up the Brazilian-helicopter-pilot memory and throws it over her shoulder. It’s an adorable moment.

And then up sneaks Fear behind her and retrieves the memory from where it landed. “Just in case,” she alleges before taking it back with her. And that’s the end of that; that’s where we move on. The camera reenters the real world and follows Riley bumping into someone at the side of the rink.

Maybe it seems I take this jazz too seriously – and maybe I have little right to comment given that I’ve never had so much as one romantic interest in my life, let alone a choice of two – but that little ‘just in case’ kind of ruined the whole thing for me. The resolution of the plot point is supposed to be that Riley’s mum’s romantic affections are fully restored to where they belong, to her husband. The tossing away of the helicopter-pilot memory was part of that; it symbolised the completeness of her renewed loyalty to him. And then Fear undermined all that by going and picking it up again.

I mean, of course it was Fear, right? ‘Just in case’ is Fear verbalised. ‘Just in case’ denotes doubt, tentativity, the hedging of bets; its mother is ‘what if?’, and unshakeable confidence its bitterest enemy. When Fear picked up that memory, what that meant was that, although Riley’s mum was happy to let her husband have the fullness of her romantic affections for the moment, since he was being a really good guy, she was afraid lest he not continue to be a really good guy, and so wasn’t prepared to offer him truly undivided loyalty. She didn’t want to put all her eggs in one basket; she wanted to keep the odd other romantic interest in her back pocket, for a rainy day. Just in case. Just in case her husband let her down again and she needed something else to fall back on.

And all right, we’re dealing entirely in the mind here; one doesn’t at all get the impression that Riley’s mum was ever going to do anything about reconnecting with that Brazilian helicopter pilot in the real world. But the mind, the heart, the seat of thought and personality and will, is where everything begins, and Jesus has made it clear that God deals with the sinful urges of the mind as if they had been followed through into real-world actions.³ When it comes to our loyalty to God, moreover, we know that nothing less than the fullness of the affections – heart, mind, soul, strength – cuts the mustard.⁴

Perhaps, then, that was why Fear’s ‘just in case’ ruined the resolution for me so badly – because I was already in mind of the relationship between God and his people of which marriage is an earthly picture, and in that relationship, ‘just in case’ amounts to idolatry. You shall have no other gods besides me, our God demands, and rightfully, given that there are no other gods besides him, on his level.⁵ And we look on him in his goodness and sigh and smile – and meanwhile, tuck our discarded idols into our back pocket with our other hand. Just in case he lets us down one day and we need something else to fall back on. Have a peer at the start of 1 Samuel 7:

And the men of Qiryat Y’arim came and took up the ark of the LORD and brought it to the house of Avinadav on the hill. And El’azar his son they consecrated as keeper of the ark of the LORD. And it happened from the day of the ark’s installation at Qiryat Y’arim that the days were many, and there were twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the LORD. And Samuel said to all the house of Israel: If with all your heart you are returning to the LORD, put aside the gods of foreignness from your midst, and the Ashtarot, and direct your heart to the LORD and serve only him, and he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.⁶

You see that the people of Israel weren’t not worshipping the LORD for those twenty years. They’d got the ark back, they’d given it a home, they’d consecrated somebody to look after it, and when things were bad (which they kind of really were, being under the jackboot of the Philistines and all), they knew that it was because something was amiss in their relationship with God; it was after him that they lamented all that time. But, as is obvious from what Samuel then says, they had other gods in their back pocket too. They hadn’t abandoned the LORD; they just weren’t following him with their whole heart. And they did that for years, years, without twigging that they were displeasing God by clinging on to his rivals as well as him.

For me, today, it’s not Ashtarot: it’s money in the bank; it’s success in my academic endeavours; it’s an ideal of a lifestyle where I have everything sorted and neat and perfect; it’s material stuff and what I think that material stuff means; it’s the good opinions of other people, or the illusion of their good opinions; it’s being That Kind of Woman.⁷ I gaze on the Lord and smile over how good he is, but I’d rather not put all my eggs in one basket. This way, if he ever lets me down, I’ve got something to fall back on. I’ve got somewhere else I can put my affections. I’ve got things to aspire to and build my sense of self around that are detached from the pursuit of his kingdom – just in case. I may think I’ve repented and tossed my idols over my shoulder, but every time, my fear goes and retrieves them again.

You’ve probably heard the statistics about how many times the Bible exhorts us its readers not to fear, but the very first instance of that is when God cuts his covenant with Abram:⁸ After these things, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying: Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you, your very great reward. And it’s like, ‘do not fear’? Where did that come from? The last we heard of Abram – the ‘these things’ that we’re now ‘after’ – was that he successfully rescued his kidnapped nephew, and then refused to take any of the spoil from his defeated enemies – hardly the actions you’d associate with a fearful person. So what was it Abram was afraid of? The next verse tells us: And Abram said: Lord GOD, what will you give me? And I go about childless, and the heir of my house is Damascus Eliezer. And just in case we weren’t sure, the next verse continues: And Abram said: Look, to me you have given no offspring, and look, a son of my household will inherit from me.

What was Abram afraid of? That God wouldn’t do what he’d said he was going to do. That God wouldn’t give him the legacy, the inheritance, that he’d promised him. That all that stuff about becoming a great nation through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed just wasn’t going to come true.⁹ That God was going to let him down.

And look, the word of the LORD (came) to him, saying: This man shall not inherit from you; rather, one who comes out of your body shall inherit from you. And he took him outside, and he said: Look towards heaven, and count the stars, if you can count them. And he said to him: Thus shall be your offspring. And he believed in the LORD, and he reckoned (it) to him (as) righteousness.

If you believe that what God has told you will happen, will happen, then you don’t need to entertain ‘what if?’s or make plans ‘just in case’. There is no ‘just in case’ scenario where God lets you down, not if you believe he is who he says he is. This is where Riley’s mum potentially has more of an excuse for her just-in-case-ery, because her husband might indeed let her down at some point, though I hasten to add that I’m not advocating infidelity in disappointing marriages. The point is, if she shouldn’t be keeping rivals for her affections in her back pocket, how much more should that be true of us, given that our God will never let us down, never dishonour himself by doing less for us than he said he would.

The reason I keep rivals for my affections in my back pocket even as I contemplate God’s goodness, then, is because I lack faith. There’s no place for the fear that insists ‘just in case’ if I have confidence in my almighty Father to fulfil everything he has spoken for me. Which being so, small wonder that faith is reckoned as righteousness, because it’s faith that keeps the affections with God where they belong – heart and mind and soul and strength, all eggs in one basket, as he commands – instead of hedging their bets on idols that offer something else to fall back on. To fall back on? Do I not know that my Father has held me since before the present world existed? Do I suppose that he would change his mind and let me fall now? Not to mention that everything I could aspire to in this world shall only last as long as it, if that, whereas the inheritance held for me in heaven is imperishable.

But of course, the thing about faith is that it’s a gift. I don’t generate it from within myself; it is granted me by the one in whom it is placed.¹⁰ If fear has led me to keep idols in my back pocket ‘just in case’, the way to repent of that is not simply to attempt to beat down my affection for those idols, but to tackle its source – to pray that he who gave me my faith would increase it until I see no need to make provision for ‘just in case’ scenarios, because I am so confident in him and what he has said.

Perhaps this all sounds a bit obvious, if you’ve known God and his scriptures for a while. But back in 1 Samuel 7, the Israelites went twenty years worshipping God while keeping idols in their back pockets, so it can’t have been obvious to them. And the dividedness of my affections testifies that it’s not terribly obvious to me, either. Still, the very reason why my ‘just in case’ precautions are so unjustified is the same reason why I know God won’t ever leave me in need of something other than him to fall back on: however faithless I am, he remains faithful.¹¹ And faith in that faithfulness is what dispels the fear that murmurs ‘just in case’.

Footnotes

¹ Here’s the whole scene if you’d like to remind yourself of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjgdiy_SGjA.

² Again, whole scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fkwf4yUuRM. How awfully kind of the humans of YouTube to have uploaded both of the sections relevant to my post today.

³ You know, that middle chunk of Matthew 5: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+5&version=ESVUK.

⁴ Take Deuteronomy 6:5 in the context of Deuteronomy 6:4, of course, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut+6&version=ESVUK. And you remember that Jesus reaffirmed this as the most important commandment.

⁵ Exodus 20:3, and, ooh, try Isaiah 45:5 – which is super fun because it’s an address to a pagan king who definitely wouldn’t have thought that the LORD was on a unique level of God-ness.

⁶ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+sam+7&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Sometimes I write a blog post that quite substantially shapes how I phrase and frame the issues I talked about in it for some time. ‘That Kind of Woman’, under January 2016 in my blog archive. Can you believe I’ve been writing this jazz since the year Inside Out came out?

⁸ Genesis 15 is an awesome chapter and if I weren’t trying to stick the point, I could go off on all sorts of exciting tangents about it: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen+15&version=ESVUK.

⁹ That was back in Genesis 12, as the Hebrew class I’ve been teaching this year know all too well: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen+12&version=ESVUK.

¹⁰ Ephesians 2:8, anyone?

¹¹ And that’s 2 Timothy 2:13.

Horrible Histories, Incredulity, and Democracy

“We are the Roundheads; we don’t want kings no more.

That’s why we started the English Civil War.

People say we’re no fun, but we disagree,

Especially when explaining parliamentary democracy.”

Horrible Histories S3 E11 (2011)

 

The parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Naseby, by an unknown artist who I’m sure would be thrilled to know that the fruit of his efforts is now firmly in the public domain and requires no attribution.

Remember Horrible Histories?¹ What a programme. Very few sketch comedy serials written for adults come close to the quality of this momentous bit of children’s broadcasting. Over its five thirteen-episode series (I refuse to acknowledge the subsequent ‘specials’ as a true continuation of the same piece of media), the jokes got increasingly clever, the parodies got increasingly slick, the material got increasingly different-and-interesting, and we got to know and love a wonderfully versatile cast that you could just tell were having the absolute time of their lives. The programme is a fine achievement and deserves all the applause it’s garnered from various quarters since it was first broadcast a decade ago.²

You can hear the ‘but’ coming already, can’t you? After all, I hardly ever lavish such a great degree of praise on anything of earthly origin unless my real purpose is to pick out some specific aspect of it that, despite my fondness and respect for the entity as a whole, I have a problem with, and do my best to surgically tear it to pieces. Today is no different, I’m afraid, though I must stress that I’m really more interested in what I can learn about how the thing was composed in the first place by taking it apart, than I am in merely dismantling it because I don’t like it and want it to go away.

So what is the thing? Well, if you were to find that the above has whetted your appetite for an episode or two of Horrible Histories and you’d really rather go and watch it now than read my ramblings any further, I’d politely ask you to take a pen and paper with you and keep a tally of how many times during your viewing session the characters responsible for narration and continuity-announcement express contemptful incredulity at such beliefs or practices of some past society as are being described. You know the kind of thing: “We Saxons really believed all that!” or, “The Romans certainly did have some very strange ideas about such-and-such,” or, “And if you think that was weird, just wait until you see this!” I do get that Horrible Histories consciously and deliberately makes it its business to track down tidbits of historical information that are likely to prove most strange and gross and amusing to its audience of twenty-first-century Brits; indeed, if it weren’t able to present the facts it deals with as hilariously unbelievable, the programme would have very little in the way of a premise. I get that. But surely there’s a very substantial degree to which the facts speak for themselves on this front? We don’t need to be told to find it weird that certain people of the Tudor period thought swallowing live buttered spiders was a good cure for sickness;³ we’re perfectly capable of finding that weird without the helpful prompting of an incredulous narrator, thank you very much. On top of that, the format of the sketch will undoubtedly frame the issue in such a way as to highlight its weirdness, because that’s how the comedy is achieved. These little inter-sketch comments of “We really believed all that!” and so forth are thus entirely superfluous, and only serve to reinforce the idea that people in the past were extremely stupid to think and do what they did, whereas we today are all terribly astute and well-informed about everything, and so vastly superior to our forebears.

Now, I’m not denying that the developments in science and technology and so forth that have taken place over the past several centuries have indeed been developments; we obviously know more about how the universe and the things in it work than our ancestors did – but only by standing on their shoulders, only by learning from their mistakes, as future generations doubtless will from ours. Just because people in the past believed things that have since been disproven or at least widely discredited, that doesn’t mean they were any stupider than we are, and it’s surely rather rude and arrogant to talk about them as if they were. It’s not, after all, as if we ourselves have lived our lives immune from ever holding beliefs or engaging in practices or making statements that have subsequently been demonstrated false or denounced as unreasonable by the general consensus. But actually, having said all that, the matter I really want to draw attention to isn’t so much the mere fact that Horrible Histories engages in this sort of astonished mockery in the first place, but rather the decisions it makes about against which targets to employ it, and which, concomitantly, not.

A favourite target, that I’ll make a bit of a case-study of today, is the Puritans. Can you believe, kids, that Puritans thought that drinking and dancing and theatre were sinful? Can you believe that they called their children things like Silence-Discipline-Search-the-Scriptures and If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-Thou-Hast-Been-Damned? Can you believe that Oliver Cromwell banned sport, make-up, and Christmas? (In fact, there are hardly any sketches that mention Cromwell without sliding that last fact in somewhere; based purely on the Horrible Histories portrayal of him, you’d have thought that was the core component of his policy.) And all right, to the ears of most modern Brits, those things probably do sound pretty weird, just as the buttered spiders or whatever, so you can see why the demand for comedic effect prompts Horrible Histories to form its caricature of the Puritans around these kinds of facts. The resultant caricature is entirely boring and miserable and judgemental and self-righteous, ironic as that last one is given that the Puritans of course knew very well that if Christ had not died they had been damned. The caricature of the Cavaliers or Restorationists against whom the Puritans sat so at odds, however, is very much more favourable: they’re the fun ones, the friendly ones, the ones you’d want to hang out with. One of the programme’s most beloved recurring characters is Charles II – ‘The King Who Brought Back Partying’, as he dubs himself in his own parody rap song⁴ – played with great charm and enthusiasm by Mat Baynton, and the portrayal is indeed a lovable one: the guy just wants to have a good time, bless him, and if he ends up successfully halting the Great Fire of London while he’s at it, well, so much the better.

 

Charles II - and we know who painted this one; it was a Dutch-born chap called Peter Lely. Still public domain though, yay.

Granted, it’s easier to sell partying than piety to almost any audience, and no less so to the youngsters who constitute Horrible Histories’ primary target market, but I’m rather struck that that opposition often seems to be presented as if it were the only issue on the table when Puritans and Restorationists clashed, particularly given that the real issues at hand were in fact pretty fundamental to the shaping of the Britain we live in today. We’re encouraged to boo the Puritans for certain aspects of the way they thought the country should be run – banning Christmas and so forth – but there’s then no nuance drawn to the effect that maybe we shouldn’t boo them for every aspect of the way they thought the country should be run. There’s no safeguard to stay us from tarring every Puritan tenet with the same brush. And so can you believe, kids, that the Puritans preferred democracy to autocracy? Can you believe that they thought real political power should be wielded by a parliament of popularly elected representatives rather than one man entirely unaccountable to the public he ruled? Can you believe that they challenged the principle of the divine right of kings?

Because the divine right of kings – that the monarch reserves the right to exercise control over a country in whatever fashion he sees fit, purely on grounds of his ancestry – is another one of those beliefs that sounds crazy to the ears of most modern Brits, isn’t it? And not just crazy, mind you, but dangerous, more dangerous than, you know, giving your child a silly-sounding forename or abstaining from certain kinds of popular entertainment. It’s surely fertile turf for a “We really believed that!”, and yet Horrible Histories never invites us to jeer at the Cavaliers for holding to it. Maybe that would come across a bit too much of a political statement – as if the alternative weren’t inevitably just as much of a political statement too; maybe they were worried about coming across as a bit anti-monarchy or something – as if that were worse than coming across as a bit anti-democracy. Or maybe criticism of this type just wouldn’t fit with their portrayal of the Cavaliers, any more than approval for being forward-thinking and concerned with freedom would fit with their portrayal of the Puritans.

There is perhaps one exception to this trend in the form of another of the programme’s parody songs, which describes the Civil War in the style of ‘Cool’ from West Side Story. Here’s a selection of the lyrics, with the Roundheads’ lines in italics, and the Cavaliers’ in bold:

We are the Roundheads; we don’t want kings no more.

That’s why we started the English Civil War.

People say we’re no fun, but we disagree,

Especially when explaining parliamentary democracy.

We are particularly excited by the notions of jurisprudence –

That’s enough dullness; we’re the Cavalier crew,

Supporting King Charles and everything that he’ll do.

Puritans bore us; it’s really a crime

When your parliamentary business cuts our partying time.

Roundheads, sound heads, keep the music down heads,

Rules and regulations led – dull but fair.

Cavaliers, three cheers, wackier headgears.

We live to boogie with our peers. Unfair? Don’t care.

I’ll stop there; you get the gist. The song is acknowledging that the Roundhead view of how a country ought to be run, parliamentary democracy, is very much in line with what we in modern Britain conceive of as right and fair, whereas the Cavalier view, absolute monarchy, is not. But, then again, because these characters still sit within the categories of caricature, dull versus fun, that Horrible Histories has already established – and yes, Cromwell later gets a verse where he talks about banning Christmas – the Cavaliers somehow still come across as the lovable ones. Look, they have cool hats and like partying! Isn’t that fun, kids? And indeed, within the Horrible Histories fandom, at least the corners of it that I’ve seen, the monarchists get a great deal of love and appreciation, the parliamentarians none.

Of course, I’ll allow for a generous extent to which that love and appreciation is merely for the portrayal of the historical figures within the programme, rather than for the figures themselves or what they stood for; Mat Baynton really is a lot of fun to watch as Charles II. That said, though, the portrayal is kind of the whole point that I’m concerning myself with here; if Horrible Histories chooses to portray a character in a particular way, that is, quite obviously, not totally detached from what it wants to communicate about what that character was actually like.

Why is it, then, that the programme sides with the Cavaliers? Both parties had their fair share of beliefs that could easily be touted as ludicrous compared to the general consensus these days; why plump for that side over the other? Just because partying is an easier sell than piety? Well, so is democracy than dictatorship, and I know it’s a children’s series, but surely it’s not too much to expect of children that they understand that it’s not great to be told what to do by someone who can’t get into trouble for making bad decisions. Or just because the idea of anyone banning Christmas is simply too horrendous for him and his faction not to then be painted as the bad guys? Is that really the message we want to put forward about what it’s important to prioritise? Is Horrible Histories suggesting that it’s more important to be allowed to celebrate Christmas than to be governed by elected representatives instead of an autocrat? I mean, think about it: at least if you’re governed by elected representatives, you stand some chance of challenging and changing laws you don’t like, bans on Christmas or otherwise.

I’ll freely admit that I have my own biases: like most evangelicals, I look rather fondly on the Puritans, because they got an awful lot right about the gospel that other factions of the Church have often got very wrong.⁵ So maybe it’s fair to suggest that this particular portrayal decision irks me more than it would otherwise. But I hope you can nonetheless see the state of affairs I’ve tried to outline: it is, surely, a very strange thing that a programme produced in modern Britain should portray a dictatorial movement more favourably than a democratic one – a very strange thing indeed. Can you believe that, kids?

Footnotes

¹ You can get quite a few episodes on iPlayer right now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b00sp0l8/horrible-histories.

² Just look at this slew of awards, notably including ‘Best Sketch Show’ – not best kids’ sketch show, just best sketch show of any sort – at the British Comedy Awards two years in a row: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1400819/awards.

³ Just for the sake of citing my source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FL8uBxPjtw&t=84s. It’s distressingly difficult to get hold of good clips of individual Horrible Histories sketches on YouTube.

⁴ That one you can get on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5abHKvUBQ&list=PLk2uTpq_0-GXRDKCWiUAK6yM3A08yi8_R.

⁵ I was at a Christian event last month where one of the speakers said that he was basically getting most of his points out of John Owen, so I thought, right, well, I’ll just go and read John Owen then. I’m working through Communion with God, which I obtained for free here, https://www.apuritansmind.com/free-ebooks-from-a-puritans-mind-and-puritan-publications/ (yay expired copyright!) on my snazzy new Kobo ereader, https://uk.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-clara-hd (it’s better than a Kindle because you don’t have to get your books through Amazon; you can get them from randomers on the Internet, like the last link). Not far enough in to provide much of a review yet.