One of the dominant themes in The Hunger Games books is that of bread and circuses. Here's an excerpt from my book The Hunger Games and the Gospel where I explain what it is all about -

In ancient Rome – “Politicians would distribute bread or host games to win the favor of the population. It was in frustration at this shallowness among his fellow Romans that the 1st century CE satirist Juvenal coined the terms “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses) to mock those who were too distracted to care about justice or the needs of the oppressed.

The handful of Hunger Games readers who happened to take Latin in high school would have been clued in that the series was directly referencing the bread and circuses of ancient Rome. Early on, we read that the country itself is named Panem (bread) and has a tesserae system that provided the districts both food and a higher chance at a ticket to the games (but as participants, not as spectators). But it isn’t until the final book that Plutarch, the ex-Head Gamemaker turned rebel, explains to Katniss that “in the Capitol, all they’ve ever known is Panem et Circenses,” and, like the Romans, they “in return for full bellies and entertainment … [gave] up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

The people in the Capitol can gorge themselves on gourmet foods, have the latest electronics, and obsess over a game show where children fight to the death. The people of Panem must (under threat of death) send the fruit of their labor as well as their children to provide for the insatiable consumerism of the Capitol. Their suffering, starvation, and brokenness supplies the bread and circuses that keep the citizens of the Capitol diverted enough to not be bothered enough to care about the hidden costs of their lifestyle.

The comparisons to our modern world couldn’t be more obvious. In the United States, our consumptive lifestyle similarly comes at the expense of suffering people around the world…

So what do you think?

• Are we in the United States distracted by bread and circuses like the Capitol?
• What are our bread and circuses?
• Do we care more for our entertainments than the suffering of others?

Granted, not everyone is embracing the film for its political message. The stars of the show have graced the covers of numerous magazines, the red-carpet premiere was broadcast live on television, and tumblr and Pinterest sites are flooded with images of fans’ favorite celebrities from the film. I recently picked up a copy of Glamour magazine to see Jennifer Lawrence (who plays Katniss) not only on the cover but in a multiple page spread in a variety of stylish dresses and hair-dos. In short, Jennifer has had done to her what the Capitol does to Katniss – beautify her for the public’s consumption. And just like the Capitol with the Hunger Games Tributes, we are devouring the celebrity hype.

The process of glamourizing a person to appeal to a cultural idea of beauty in The Hunger Games book was an indictment of the shallowness of the Capitol. It was a sign of their frivolity and excess that is juxtaposed against the dire poverty of the surrounding districts. The people in the Capitol threw their money at body modifications and lavish parties while the districts starved. Not much different than us in the United States who have no problem buying cheap clothing and luxury goods produced by oppressed and underpaid workers in the districts developing countries that surround us.

I appreciate the ironic gesture that the marketers of the film developed. They know that the United States is Panem, but that even as the viewing audiences cheer on the poor girl from District 12, they will consume her as if they were Capitol citizens. So they developed the Capitol Couture website, highlighting the very fashions the book indicts. China Glaze issued a line of Hunger Games inspired nail polish. The actors playing the Tributes are treated just like Tributes as they are done-up and paraded around to premieres and photo shoots. It’s ironic in that the average viewer does not grasp the irony or the message of the story that such circuses distract from the fact that children are sent to be slaughtered in the arena for entertainment. In fact many will watch the film for simply the entertainment of seeing the Hunger Games visually portrayed.

But even as we, like the Capitol, allow ourselves to be distracted by the hype – we are still encountering a story that calls for the undermining of systems that placate the masses with bread and circuses so that they are too distracted to care about justice. Katniss and Peeta strive to not just be pieces in the Capitol’s games. They see through the façade of the Capitol and its shallow ways. They want to hold the Capitol responsible for the ways it oppresses the districts, allows the masses to starve while the few live in luxury, and treats even children as if they were things to be used instead of people deserving of dignity.

The United States may be the Capitol of Panem, and some may be treating The Hunger Games as just another circus, but that message of subversive living is being heard even if just subconsciously. This is an important film because of that. Katniss Everdeen is more than just another beautiful celebrity – she is a voice calling for us to put an end to injustice and oppression. And the world is watching.

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To read more on the connections between Panem and the United States today, check out my book The Hunger Games and the Gospel: Bread, Circuses, and the Kingdom of God.

I think at the time I had to restrain myself from asking if she also banned her kids from hearing the story of the feeding on the 5000 in Sunday school, but it was hard not to think about her objection a few months later as I read The Goblet of Fire and its subplot about house elves. As it revealed, food does not magically appear on the tables at Hogwarts, it is prepared by hardworking elves who in the wizarding world are generally kept as slaves. House elves have been so trained to subservience that most of them believe their identity is derived from serving their wizard master. In the books, Hermione commits herself to working for rights and fair pay for house elves. Of course her efforts are ruthlessly mocked by not only her classmates at Hogwarts, but by many readers of the books who found the “rights for elves” subplot to be a silly distraction from the real story.

I know that back in 2000, thinking about the plight of the people who worked to provide me with food was not something I had ever done. Recently out of college, I was quickly learning the hard work required to make my own meals. But at the time the food I bought at the grocery store could have magically appeared on the shelves for all I knew. I might in saying grace thank God for the food and the hands that prepared it, but that never extended beyond the kitchen to those who grew the food or did the backbreaking work of picking the produce. My perspective has changed tremendously over the past 12 years, as I now do my best to be aware of where my food comes from and the conditions faced by the workers who grow it. Sadly, the plight of the poor, mostly immigrant workers who grow our food is uncomfortably similar to that of house elves in the Harry Potter universe. Also similar is the likelihood that one will be mocked if one dares to acknowledge those workers or advocate for their rights.

Thankfully recent films like Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation have forced people to at least be aware that our food doesn’t magically appear in the grocery store and that the people who grow and process our food are generally treated poorly. But people don’t want to know about such things – because knowledge makes them feel like they may have to do something to change things. If animals are being abused in factory farms and the immigrants who work in those places are treated like animals, it makes it difficult to sit down to enjoy a feast much less mindlessly consume the cheap food such a system produces. So food companies are helping people return to states of ignorance through expensive propaganda campaigns that while acknowledging that our food comes from somewhere do so by presenting idyllic images of family farms without a poor worker or abused animal in sight. While the “happy cows come from California” was perhaps the most extreme example of this sort of misdirection in advertising, McDonald’s proud of our suppliers series is the most recent. If the McDonald’s ads are to be believed, their food comes from dreamlands that look deceiving similar to the average person’s idea of the pastoral landscape of heaven. I don’t doubt that these suppliers work for McDonald’s in some fashion, but Harry Potter seems to do a better job representing reality than these ads. Countless reports reveal the harsh conditions faced by those that grow food for fast food companies, reports that places like McDonalds are now trying to undermine with these ads. But in truth many people would rather believe the lie they’re selling than have to change their eating habits or take the unpopular path of advocating for worker’s rights. As The Meatrix shorts so brilliantly reveal, few people want to take the red pill and know the truth about where our food comes from.

As a bumper sticker on my car says, “the truth will set you free but first it will make you angry.” The McDonald’s ads are constructed to not only hide the truth, but to keep people from ever getting angry. Angry people change the world and the world doesn’t want to be changed. I agree with that mom at the Harry Potter debate, teaching our kids that food appears from some magic place (be that the grocery store or the idyllic family farm from the propaganda images) does them a disservice. Life isn’t convenient or easy despite what the fast food companies would like us to believe and problems don’t magically disappear just because we would rather not deal with them. So when we say grace we need to extend that thanks to all those who worked hard, often with barely any pay, to bring us that food. And, like Hermione, we need to advocate for and embody change – even when it’s unpopular or difficult. But whatever we do, we need to at least embrace the truth instead of being placated with lies.

It was this wickedness, this failure to care about what God cares about by challenging the status quo, that Amos witnessed when he came to Jerusalem. A poor herdsman from Judah, Amos was part of a population that was subservient to Israel at the time. Judah therefore bore the brunt of the expenses of Israel, with the poor and needy being trampled to cover the expenditures of those in power. Through the manipulation of debt and credit, the wealthy had amassed more and more of the land at the expense of poor landowners. Some scholars believe that the only thing that would have even brought a poor shepherd like Amos to Jerusalem was the requirement that he pay tribute to those that controlled his lands at an official festival. But what a struggling working class man saw in Jerusalem was a population that not only lived in extravagance, but one that had stopped asking questions about if they were living in the ways of the Lord. In fact they not only had stopped asking questions about whether their lifestyles based on the oppression of the poor reflected God’s desires, they had been told by the powers that be that it was not proper (or permitted) to ask questions that challenged the ways of Israel.

Seeing this abandonment of the faith in the guise of apathy moved Amos, who was not a religious professional, to speak the word of the Lord to Israel. Although the governing religious hierarchy told him to not prophecy against the ways of Israel, Amos knew he could not remain silent about the injustices he saw. He saw the people doing religion as normal while the poor were exploited on their behalf and knew they had rejected their God. So the message he was given to deliver on the streets of Jerusalem was that God hates their worship gatherings and the noise of their praise songs because they have given up on caring about what it actually means to be God’s people. Amos tells them –

Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,… who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!”

Not caring about how their lives and not just their ritual gatherings are caught up in following God had turned Israel into the wicked child at Passover. They enjoyed the prosperity injustice allowed them and therefore had accepted the injunction against questioning the practices of the government and economic system. They went through the motions of liturgy without doing the actual work of wrestling with the questions of the faithful. Amos called them to instead to stop exploiting the poor and let justice roll across the land. He begged them to ask the hard questions of themselves and of their rulers – to be disciples despite the cost.

But questioning the status quo is dangerous. Jerusalem had no interest in hearing the word of the Lord that challenged their economic prosperity. The powers that be moved to silence his prophecy and evicted Amos from Jerusalem.

And yet his witness stands as scripture. Thanks be to God.

The episode is a beautiful incarnation story and has repeatedly popped into my mind as I reflect on the current Occupy Wall Street protests (yes, this is the way my mind works). There is no precise correlation, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities. In our isolated attempts at living the American dream according to the rules the system imposed upon us we know there are problems, but there is a tendency to assume that some authority will somehow eventually fix our problem for us. So we wait patiently, abiding by the rules, taking comfort in our sweet but impotent religious rituals, dying slowly as we come to mistake the rat-race for reality. A few of us might get ahead, moved to the fast lane so to speak, which we take as a sign of hope that the system is working and that one day we might actually arrive. We might talk about freedom, and love, and justice, and mercy as if they are some ideal we can strive towards – a better world we can hope to someday arrive at – but they aren’t reflected in the shape of our everyday lives. That is consumed with inching forward in our individual existence.

So when something like Occupy Wall Street comes along it challenges the status quo. And if our hope is in the fulfillment of the status quo, a challenge to that makes us fearful. What if we lose our place? What if all the time we have spent was wasted? Shouldn’t we just wait for the people in charge to figure it all out and get us all running smoothly again? What is scary to some about the Occupy movement is that instead of giving comfort in the moment or hope in the continued status quo, it is calling for liberation. Perhaps that is not the message of every voice or even of the details, but the collective message is one calling people out to a different way. It is a message that the system is broken, we are hopelessly stuck, and we need to find a way out.

There might not be a TARDIS to incarnate the Doctor into our particular moment, but for the sake of liberation perhaps we are the one we have been waiting for. Liberation is the result of the event of love. Not a vague hope in the idea of love, but the event of love entering into and utterly transforming the tragedy of the status quo. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote about this love,

It is not the interpretation of love as an ideal, a heavenly power or as a commandment, but of love as an event in a loveless, legalistic world: the event of an unconditioned and boundless love which comes to meet man, which takes hold of those who are unloved and forsaken, unrighteous or outside the law, and gives them a new identity, liberates them from the norms of social identifications and from the guardians of social norms and idolatrous images. … [But] Just as the unconditional love of Jesus for the rejected made the Pharisees his enemies and brought him to the cross, so unconditional love also means enmity and persecution in a world in which the life of man is made dependent on particular social norms, conditions and achievements. A love which takes precedence and robs these conditions of their force is folly and scandal in this world.”

The impulse toward freedom, toward liberation, is slowly awakening across the nation. The doors have been thrown open; we now have to choose if we will drive out into the light. The protests are, of course, not perfect. There are the dangers of creating new constraining status quos, of corruption, or simply the re-iteration of the same status quos with new faces at the helm. These are the typical demons that prey upon those embracing the event of liberating love – demons that the guardians of the current status quo are sure to parade about in attempts to scare the timid away from joining the movement towards freedom. But love always involves risk. Freedom from the conditions and gridlock of this world is always tied to the ongoing event of love. Love – that unconditional event that liberates for the shalom of the whole – is not an ideal but that ongoing way of life. It takes work to live into a new identity – to figure out how to live differently. The call to occupy isn’t for a quick fix (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t settle for), but it is instead the call to usher in an entire new way of being that requires us all to drastically change as we enter into the difficult work of liberating love – despite obstacles, despite opposition.

It’s hard to speak of a different way in our world today. Perhaps all I’m doing is just reflecting on a good story here. But maybe it’s a parable, or better yet, a dream. And the world is waking up and sometimes dreams do come true.

These are the Native American children who had no choice but to attend these schools and are just now finding their voice to start healing from their experiences there. For those unfamiliar with the Residential or Boarding school system required of Native Americans (because it is definitely not something taught in most history classes), these were government-funded, generally church-run schools that “were set up to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development of Aboriginal children.” If you’ve seen the film Rabbit Proof Fence you might have some clue about what these schools were like, but they existed in the US and Canada as well (and some are still functioning in the US). Native American children would be placed in these schools – often by force against their parent’s wishes – to have their culture “civilized” out of them as a means of assimilating them to white culture. Often parents would not know where their children were taken, and frequently never saw their children again. Children in these schools were forbidden to speak their own language or practice their own culture. Many of the schools used the children as forced labor for government projects. As stories of these schools have emerged, tales of molestation, rape, abuse, disappearances, murders, and medical experimentation and sterilization are common themes.

The horror of these schools is a reality as are the racist assumptions that lead to their formation. The children who were forced into these schools now have emotional scars that need serious healing. As in any case of abuse, to find that healing and to properly mourn what they lost through what was inflicted upon them, the victims need to tell the truth of their experiences. And in the US, the only legal way to do so is to bring a lawsuit against those that harmed them. Sadly though that opens up the victims to further abuses and pain. Those bringing this particular lawsuit are being vilified for their audacity to accuse elderly nuns of abuse. They are being accused of being greedy for money and that they are only doing this out of a hatred for the Catholic Church. As a numbers of responses have said, how dare the Native Americans mar the good name of these nuns and the Church without proof (as if the testimony of 45 Native Americans doesn’t count as proof). If this is even allowed to come to trial (which is doubtful since the allegations are so old), they will face further struggles as their story is suppressed by the loopholes of the legal system.

In reading about this recent lawsuit all I could think is that this is exactly why we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States. Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness, describes how it was precisely for this reason of allowing the truth to be told with the least amount of pain for the victims that South Africa set up their commission as they did. They knew that to bring all the acts of injustice to trial would not only bankrupt the nation, but that it would hide the truth as perpetrators did everything in their power to not be found guilty and punished. It would not bring healing to their nation to have the victims constantly be told that they were lying about their pain and abuse. So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission choose to promise amnesty in exchange for confessions of truth. Only by telling the truth – all of the murders, abuses, and sins – could a person be exempt from being possibly punished by the government for their crimes. While this system angered those hungry for revenge, it served the purpose of telling the truth necessary for healing. (And it’s not like perpetrators were never punished – confessing to such crimes often led to ostracism from friends, broken marriages, and even suicides as they came face to face with their depravity). But as the name states – the purpose is reconciliation not revenge.

Canada has created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for precisely the purpose of telling the truth about the Native American residential schools. The Commission believes they have a mandate to find out the truth of what happened in those schools so as to help with the reconciliation process of all involved. The system is far from perfect, but it is a step towards allowing true healing to be possible for the survivors. Instead of making the victims out to be the bad guys as they search for healing in a system that often refuses to acknowledge their continued mistreatment, a Commission like this in the US would at least start a dialogue that is long overdue. This most recent lawsuit and the responses it has provoked serve as poignant reminders that there is a lot of truth our nation still needs to face. Pretending such things don’t exist by writing them out of our textbooks or washing our hands of any responsibility only leads to more pain – for everyone. The truth will set us free, but only if we are courageous enough to let go of our defensiveness and let it be heard.

That sort of denial of the created world in favor of escaping it all someday was difficult to hear, but it wasn’t surprising. As much as a few more moderate evangelicals attempt to deny that such “pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die” theology is still around, it still shapes the faith experience of the typical evangelical church most Sundays. What has surprised me recently is hearing similar dualism preached in churches that would never self-identity as being anywhere near such evangelicals theologically. But despite having disparate views on the Bible, justification, and inclusiveness, the outcome of such dualism in those churches is the same – a disparaging of the body and elevation of the soul. Be the roots a shallow neo-Gnosticism or popular Buddhism or simply a theology that starts with the Fall instead of creation, what get preached is that we are not our bodies.

It’s a way of viewing the world that makes that bumper sticker, “We are spiritual beings having a physical experience,” so popular. What gets valued is not the actions of faith – caring for others, studying the word, serving the poor, tending to creation, feeding the hungry – but finding spiritual contentment deep down in one's soul. While evangelicals admit that life now is messed-up and so look forward to escaping it all someday, progressive dualists want to escape it now through meditating, unplugging, and letting-go of any obligation to help build a better world.

And therein lies the problem. When faith is all about a dualistic escapism, it sadly allows no room for mercy. Evangelicals often mock calls to work to save the environment or end extreme poverty because this world is not our home and is all going to burn anyway. Progressive dualists similarly mock calls to work for justice as imposing unnecessary shoulds upon them that get in the way of them being present with their souls. Both forms of denying our embodiment in this world provide convenient excuses for ignoring the needs of others as individuals are allowed to focus solely on their own personal spiritual needs. It’s easier to opt out of loving one’s neighbor when one’s theology is built around such a hierarchical view of creation that not only divides our body and souls, but privileges the one over the other. And with such views held by those in power, the bodies of the marginalized (women, the poor, the racially other, the queer, the old, the disabled) continue to be oppressed and ignored by those whose theologies assume they aren’t worth being bothered about.

These are theologies that I can’t reconcile with the way of Christ. With the story of a God who, challenging the dualist religious assumptions of the time, became flesh and dwelled among us. Who broke bread, healed bodies, and suffered on the cross. Who says he despises our religious gatherings if all we do is pray and worship and neglect caring for the bodies of the hungry and the oppressed. I have to affirm creation in its wholeness – undivided body and soul included. My theology is embodied because spirituality encompasses all creation, not just the parts I happen to prefer. I think Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel phased it best as she described what it means to live out this embodied theology –

Disembodiment is lovelessness. Insecurity, coldness, power and weariness are hidden behind abstraction. A theology of embodiment mistrusts all self-made fantasies of the beyond which are engaged in at the expense of the healing of people here and the realization of the kingdom of God on this earth. It is committed to a this-worldly expectation which here already looks for full, complete life, for wide spaces for women and men, and from this work derives the hope that nothing can separate us from the life and love of God.

I was reminded of that encounter this week as I was reading Rowan Williams’ essay “On Being Creatures.” The essay argues that only a belief that God created the world ex nihilo allows us to embrace our full dependence on God as the source of our identity and therefore stop competitively asserting ourselves over and against other people and the environment in futile attempts to define and create our own identity. For Williams, it is only in rooting ourselves in God that we can be fully human and live responsibly in the world. What most intrigued me though were his conclusions regarding the practical implications of what it would mean for us to trust so fully in God. He writes –

Both the rhetoric and the practice of our defence policies often seem to offend against the acknowledgment of creatureliness – in two respects, at least. First, there is the offence against any notion of ‘creaturely solidarity’ implied by the threat not only to obliterate large numbers of the human race … but to unleash what is acknowledged to be an uncontrollable and incalculable process of devastation in our material environment, an uncontainable injury to the ecology of the planet. Second, there is the extent to which our deterrent policies have become bound to a particular kind of technological confidence: somewhere in the not-so-distant future, it might be possible to construct a defensive or aggressive military system which will provide a final security against attack, a final defence against the pressure of the ‘other’. If I may repeat some words written in 1987 about the problems posed by the Strategic Defence Initiative, the Christian is bound to ask, ‘How far is the search for impregnability a withdrawal from the risks of conflict and change? A longing to block out the possibility of political repentance, drastic social criticism and reconstruction?’

Not embracing our identity as dependant creations of a loving God puts us at odds with the rest of creation. When we assume that our identity is shaped by something other than God, like our own efforts and resourcefulness, we live in competition and not solidarity with others. Others become not fellow image-bearers similarly in dependant relationships with God, but entities competing with us for power and limited resources. Instead of loving others, we set up defenses (or offenses) against the pressure of the other – even to the point that we arrange our world so that we don’t even have to acknowledge that the other exists.

We don’t want to know about starving children, or trafficked women, or ravaged countries if hearing about such things might upset us and demand something of us. We’d rather pretend that people we dislike don’t exist than have to encounter them and see them as human. So people try to ban days like the National Day of Silence. They pass laws prohibiting the construction of mosques in their community. They, as like with what happened to a pastor friend in Wheaton, spray-paint “Go home N***” on a black family’s garage door when that family moves into a white neighborhood. Instead of trusting in God and embracing a ‘creaturely solidarity’ because of that trust, defenses against having to respond to the other are continually built up. And as Williams so rightly points out, when we refuse to even engage the other by building up ultimate defenses against them, we shut down any possibility of being convicted of our sins. If we don’t have to engage the other, then how our actions affect them are above critique. If we’d rather pretend that LGBT people do not exist then we won’t listen to (or even allow) any dialogue regarding how they are treated. But we can never fight against injustice if we refuse to admit that injustice even exists. Liberation and reconciliation will never happen in this world if we refuse to even acknowledge voices different than our own.

But this isn’t what creation is supposed to be. We do not live ultimately in a competitive world, but we live in a world where everything is a gift from God. It is only when we can acknowledge God as creator and therefore trust in God that we can stop asserting ourselves over others and refusing to responsibly and lovingly see them as part of the community of the imago-dei. I appreciated Williams’ essay for reminding me of this practical importance of our beliefs. Our theology of creation matters. Not for some silly science vs. faith debate, but because it defines our very identity and how we live communally as the body of Christ in this world.

To take the most impersonal of examples – my husband Mike is working towards his PhD in church history and is currently taking a class on the Civil Rights movement the content of which he’s discussed with me. As a good little American public school student, I never once actually had a history class that managed to make it to that particular era. So while I know the cultural legends about the period (the bus boycott, Brown v. Board, “I Have a Dream” and all that), I understand little about the political undercurrents of the whole thing. The idealistic side of me can’t wrap my mind around extreme racism and wants to cheer for how the nation was able to see its own sin and repent of its evils. At least that’s the fairy tale version that we tell as an inspirational bedtime story.

But in truth selfishness played a big role in the whole thing. If not for the Cold War and the fact that most powerful Americans hated the commies more than they did people of color, most of the cultural revolution would never have occurred. America was playing the role of the defender of freedom in the post-WW2 world. We stood for truth, justice, and the American Way. We spread the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights to every corner of the globe in order that our way (and not the communist way) would win out in the end. But those pesky commies made sure to point out that in America not all people were truly free. They used segregation and racism against us to undermine the truth of our ideals. Since we couldn’t let the communists be right, we as a nation had to do something about that. Time to do something to ensure a minimum of rights for everyone regardless of the color of their skin. Sure, there were activists and idealists, but the government run system ultimately changed not because people had a change of heart but because there was a greater “evil” to be fought.

Same thing with women’s rights. Since 9/11 there has been a fascinating openness in conservative circles to speak up for certain sorts of women’s rights. Granted, feminism and equality are still bad words and submission and the stained-glass ceiling are still alive and well, but even the most complementation of folks are speaking out about the need to end female genital mutilation and sex trafficking, and about how educating women can be a good thing. I want to idealistically believe that people are waking up to the sin of sexism, but the cynical part of me believes that it is only that the majority of Americans believe we are at war with Islam and want to separate themselves as far as possible from the perceived evils of an “oppressive religion.” It’s not about women, it’s about us.

Or take Egypt. We can all tweet away that “Egypt is free” and get teary-eyed at democracy for all, but I have to wonder what would happen if it all got too close to home. When Haiti had the first successful slave revolt in 1825, the United States refused to acknowledge them as an independent nation. Why? Because recognizing a free Haiti would undermine our own economy which was built on the backs of slaves. So what if it wasn’t Egypt or Yemen that was in revolution, but China? Would we be cheering on the spread of global democracy if the potential cost of that revolution was the worldwide economy and our lives of luxury?

Do we only care about others when there is something in it for us? Will we only put our necks out for the oppressed when our own safety is on the line? I don’t know. Sometimes though it’s hard not to be cynical. I can see why the temptation to turn to the extremes of militant activism or Hauerwasian withdraw holds so much appeal for many. Faith in “thy kingdom come” is hard to sustain.

I admit, I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Yes, it’s crass and consumerist, but seeing how marketers decide to spend millions of dollars in an attempt to manipulate me each year holds some sort of strange appeal (twisted as it may be). One could say that it’s entertainment at its finest.

The buzz after the big game usually revolves around the commercials — the best and worst of the night, so to speak. This year all of us Gen Xers were amused and reminded of our own childhoods by Volkswagen’s “force” using kid. And the nation was stirred to sentimental working class patriotism by Chrysler’s homage to Detroit (as they sold a luxury car no working-class family could ever afford). But the award for “Most Controversial” went to Groupon’s satirical public service announcements turned coupon selling spot.

Three ads were aired which turned the celebrity charity spokesperson shtick on its head, but it is the Tibet one that has our country all in a dither. The commercial starts out portraying the people of Tibet and alludes to the cultural oppression they are facing, it then switches to a celebrity spokesperson explaining how he was able to save money at a Tibetan restaurant by purchasing a Groupon coupon. As the Groupon blog explains:

The gist of the concept is this: When groups of people act together to do something, it’s usually to help a cause. With Groupon, people act together to help themselves by getting great deals. So what if we did a parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as “Save the Whales”), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in “Save the Money”)?

Since we grew out of a collective action and philanthropy site (ThePoint.com) and ended up selling coupons, we loved the idea of poking fun at ourselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause. So we bought the spots, hired mockumentary expert Christopher Guest to direct them, enlisted some celebrity faux-philanthropists, and plopped down three Groupon ads before, during, and after the biggest American football game in the world.

But apparently most of America didn’t quite understand the joke. The Groupon blog is full of comments from offended viewers, and Twitter and Facebook are full of posts asking people to boycott Groupon for the offensive commercials. The general response is “I’m offended that Groupon used the suffering of the people of Tibet as a way to sell coupons.”

But as I see it, most people are simply missing the point. Granted, the Super Bowl is a time when people expect to be entertained by ads, not forced to interpret social commentary. But the erudite and self-deprecatory style of mockumentary director Christopher Guest is exactly what they were given with the ad. Groupon took the basic style of American celebrity charity and showed it as the selfish act that it generally is. Charity in America is unfortunately often not an act of selfless compassion, but instead is a way for people to feel good about themselves or gain something in the act. We don’t just give money to charities; we hold expensive galas and silent auctions that reward us for our act. Politicians and celebrities earn brownie points for telling the world how much they give. Charity, for many Americans, always is an act of self-aggrandizement at the expense of suffering people.

And Groupon called us (and themselves) out on that blatant hypocrisy. In my book, it was a brilliantly done harsh critique of American culture. And America missed the point. People who would generally care less about Tibet, or who would have been offended if a political/leftist/socialist “Free Tibet” ad had been aired, are now acting all offended on behalf of Tibet. Groupon showed us that the people we should be offended at are ourselves, but that was not a criticism people were ready to hear as they stared at the screen mumbling, “Here we are now, entertain us.”

I get that Groupon, like any other business, is out to make a profit. I don’t ascribe anything near to pure motives to them in this whole controversy. They are making donations to the very causes they portrayed in their satirical ads, and at the same time are making money from those ads by selling coupons. I don’t know if their whole purpose was the controversy. As with the commercial itself, the motives involved seemed to be a multi-layered mix of commercialism, commentary, and controversy.

I can’t tell people what they should or should not be offended by, but I do think it is worth pausing a moment to consider the message of the Groupon ads. Why do we give to charity? Do we support causes for the sake of the cause or for our own sake? What are we more passionate about — helping others or helping ourselves?