By: J. Thomas Johnson
Do kids still play king of the hill? Some may remember standing atop a hill while other kids tried to wrestle, toss, or somehow eject you off and claim the throne momentarily. I know my children don’t play it. In fact, I can easily imagine myself stepping in to stop them if they tried.
I’m not sure from whence that instinct has come. When I was a child, my friends and I rarely saw a hill that one of us didn’t try to claim. But, for whatever reason, that game and many others of my childhood are disappearing from the public life of children. Sam Greenspan wrote an article a few months back that listed king of the hill as one of eleven childhood games that are too violent for contemporary American culture. http://11points.com/11-playground-games-played-kid-violent-today/
King of the hill was both a powerful and a terrifying game. While climbing the hill, I would be filled with aggression and violence. The only goal was to topple the king. The only morality was achieving that goal. The thrill of having achieved that goal was intoxicating.
And yet, once atop the hill, with the power of victory came isolation and paranoia. Whereas all of us climbing the hill had been allied in an attempt to depose the king, upon becoming the king, now I was surrounded only by enemies. In many ways for me, it was more fun to topple the king than to be the king. I can remember on many occasions allowing myself to be defeated so as to recapture the simplicity and safety of the attack. It was a game that, if I had been truly observant, had many life lessons wrapped up in it.
It seems to me that in the public life of our culture, the vast majority of people have come to appreciate the safety of standing on the slopes trying to topple the king. Whether we’re talking about celebrities, comedians, politicians, principals, pastors, institutionalized religion, or even God there is safety and comradery in joining the masses attempting to topple those who have the audacity to stand atop the hill. Today it would seem that the moral high ground is on the slopes. From news media to social media to community life, the safest place to stand is on the slopes and the safest stance to take is opposition to whoever or whatever stands upon the summit.
A few years ago several prominent comedians—Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock among them—made headlines when they publicly declared that they were done playing college campuses because of the hyper-sensitivity of students to their humor. Here is a link to an Inside Edition story from 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kVdHr7sR0o.
This is a strange rebirth of king of the hill. In this version the players cooperate to topple the king, but very few if any wish to assume the summit. And those who do assume the summit spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince the masses that they are, in fact, on the slopes with them, disowning the summit on which they stand and trying to distance themselves from power and associate it with an adversary.
It seems to me that Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is the prophet of a newly emerging kind of leadership:
Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just… do things.
There are some interesting social dynamics tied up in this historically atypical social competition. Edwin Friedman in his book A Failure of Nerve has diagnosed our culture as chronically anxious. There seems to be a growing consensus about this cultural anxiety, but causes and correlations are difficult to discern. Some believe that the rise of social media is to blame or smart phone technology or unprecedented wealth and affluence or the ease of access to mood-altering and pain-reducing pharmaceuticals, while others, like me, suspect it is the loss of faith in God as Creator and Sustainer of life that has allowed these other things to contribute to such systemic anxiety and despair.
Like kids on a playground, outrage may be safe, mocking may be community-affirming, and protesting might be morally soothing. And all these things have their place in an ethical society. But, if these transitional phases become habitations, both personal character and social ethics will eventually be undermined. As the Jewish and Christian Scriptures have long warned us:
1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, 2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.
Psalm 1:1-2, NIV
Being outraged by evil is certainly an ethical stance. The capacity to see the hypocrisy or foolhardiness or grotesqueness of evil is a moral type of discernment. Publicly protesting evil can be a valid form of resisting it. But, for those of us who follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus, our personal morality and our cultural ethics are not rooted in our reaction to evil, but in our submission to the teachings God has given to us and our practical embodiment of those teachings in our lives. There is great peril in allowing the Joker to be our sage. Jesus’ voice will lead us to the health for which our moral outrage longs:
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:43-45, NIV