Otherly invasions

I've been having trouble going to sleep lately. Last night, I was thinking about my youth while I tossed and turned and fought backache. I began thinking about playing Combat with my friends, or rather the sons on my parents' friends. Combat was a television show relatively popular at the time, and we had our play guns and we waged junior war.

The battle was played out in the unkempt front yard of the friends of my parents. There were dry, dirt ditches and such to flop into, and we would race to and fro to throw ourselves into a ditch or behind a car or whatever. I seemed to remember being very good at this for some reason. I don't, however, remember how we won the game or whether we used just our imagination for the battle or we took turns being the villain or whatever. I remember the chase, the diving, and the making of battle sounds with our mouths.

I think I was remembering this because I had been watching a television show the other night about still another invasion of earth. It came on after a movie about an invasion of earth. While I was watching the movie, a commercial came on about a DVD that has been released of a movie that was released earlier this year about, you guessed it, an invasion of earth.

The invasions have come fast and furious lately. Be they zombies (or is it Zombies?) or aliens or ghosts or monsters, or vampires and werewolves or kiddie witches and warlocks, something is always invading us. I've read there is a movie out there that has been filmed but had not been released about North Koreans invading thiscountry. Perhaps it wasn't released because the villains weren't universal enough. Now, if they were North Korean zombies from outer space who went to school to learn magic...

Everyone is always invading earth.Why do you think that is? Are we such dolts that we need invading as the sci-fi of the late 1950s seem to indicate. Do we need Godzillas ruming rampant?

Part of the reason for these movies/television shows is the coming 2012 end of the world thinking. We'll have to deal with that next year. But part of it, I think, is that we are all searching for something that will unite us, and that something has to be "other" because there is virtually nothing on earth that will do so. No matter our country, no matter our political or religious beliefs, when the aliens attack, we're ALL against them, even if (as in Transformer movies) the aliens all speak English. See, these are invasions of "the other," as defined by being something that is not of humanity. Despite all the things we disagree on, we are in the end human (even Democrats).

What a novel concept. Something that we're all either for or against. In that moment, we are unified. Sadly, there is almost nothing that falls under those categories any longer. Eons ago, the church, the universal church, got together and scrapped some creeds into existence. We've been picking them apart ever since, with denominations as rampant as alien invasions. Heck, in the United Methodist river I'm swimming in, we have a book of discipline, but recent judicial verdicts clearly show that the book is much more a set of guidelines than rules. We are apparently able to break clear rules at a whim.

In the Message's translation of Zechariah 9, I read one sentence that stands out. It says, "The whole world has its eyes on God." It says that of the return of the captives to Jerusalem after captivity abroad. But what a lovely thought it is. All eyes on God. The emphasis is on ALL. It is an otherly concept at best.

The Bible says that one day ALL knees will bow to Jesus. It will be the point of ultimate unity. Till then, the only thing that can unite us, apparently, is wistful imaginative invasions of "the other."