SOME YEARS AGO, I worked with a deacon who used the phrase “Popeye theology.” My memories of Popeye didn’t help me interpret that phrase, so I asked him what it meant.
“I yam what I yam,” he explained.
I admired his comfort in his own skin. Many of us have trouble accepting ourselves and/or our situations in life. One manifestation of that is what is called imposter syndrome; the feeling that we are only pretending to be capable people. Another is to be angry with those who seem to think they are better than we are. Or we may think we are better than others, but they won’t admit it or listen to us.
If we are comfortable in our own skins, we are more likely to accept that others have that same right, to live and believe as they see fit, as long as they aren’t abusing themselves or others. They are what they are, and Popeye theology says we don’t make a big deal out of that.
Popeye theology is the willingness to acknowledge who we are, and yet not to make that a deal breaker with others.
This is a good point of reflection for those of us who follow the Christian calendar as we travel through Eastertide. We are all a result of something, whether it is our families, our experiences, our traumas or our preconceptions. Christian scriptures show how Jesus and his disciples/Apostles dealt with that reality; it is similar to teachings from other religious teachers and writers.
During Lent, we were asked to contemplate the things that keep God at a distance from us and try to mend at least one of those problems.
Easter shows us something we don’t always have an easy time with; it shows Jesus accepting the people who abused and killed him, transcending that experience by turning death into life, not just for himself but for the rest of us. We remember his kindness not only to other Jews, including those who were outcasts, but to members of outcast communities like the Samaritans, and even Roman officers.
He understood that we are all products of our own families, our own communities, our own education, experience and traditions. That is how he demonstrated God’s character to the people of his own time and place, and how he continues to teach us, if we are paying attention to his words and example.
I yam what I yam. We are what we are. That is where God meets us, not in some imagined future where we have overcome all of our difficulties so we can meet God with nothing on our consciences.
Biblical teaching would seem to say that is impossible, because we can’t achieve it without the help of our Creator, and in Christian thought, the help of our Savior. Jesus kept telling people he was not their judge. Rather, our own lives judge us.
If we accept his offer, he is rather our lawyer and advocate, arguing that he has paid our penalty, so we are free.
Free to do what? Free to love as we have been loved. That was Jesus’ new commandment the night he was arrested, that we should love one another as he loved us.
The question we bring to the risen Christ, the question we bring to God, is how are we loved, so that we know how to love all those others, who are what they are, and ourselves as those neighbors?
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Blaine Hammond is a retired Episcopal priest currently volunteering at St. Luke’s in Sequim. He has also led services and preached at Episcopal and Lutheran churches in Port Angeles and around the Puget Sound area.
