Hell On Earth
In Which I Complain About Brian Johnson
Well shoot, did you know that Lent is just around the corner? I did not. I have been trucking along through Epiphany, thinking that it would last forever, and that the Light to the Gentiles and the Glory of My People Israel was the be all and end all of the church year. Totally managed to forget about the sword that was bound to pierce my own soul also, and about having to walk in the way in the cross eventually. Also, I have been so used to Johnny Simmons alerting us all to the Sexigesima and Septigesima days that it has just crept up on me. Sob.
So, what is pretty amusing is that, in an effort to avoid consuming more Peter Enns content, which is what I am supposed to be doing, Matt and I, in the car, listened to Brian Johnson explaining how it is going to be possible for this “generation” to not die. When asked if he was kidding around, he looked straight into the camera and said he thinks, because of AI and such like, it will be possible for people alive today to, well, he doesn’t exactly say “live forever” which is, well…what is that, exactly? No, he says that he just won’t die.
Now, as an important caveat, I am intrigued by his claims on a variety of health subjects. The fact that he can’t procure food in the usual way by toddling over to the supermarket and filling his cart with vegetables from the produce section is kind of alarming. Why can’t he? Because, he says, the water supply is “polluted.” No, he sources his legumes and lentils from other parts of the world that haven’t sprayed everything with pesticides. This, it seems to me, is a bleak turn of events, because I have nowhere else to buy my lettuce and onions. I don’t have time to garden at scale. I have to go on living in a world that is doing me to death in various ways what with the bad food and the microplastics and other toxins I am apparently swimming around in—I and everyone else I know.
Likewise, the idea that if a person gets proper amounts of sleep, she might avoid the horrors of dementia is something I am willing to ponder. I would love to be able to sleep enough. Doesn’t that sound amazing? And yet, in all the advice that Brian Johnson gives about how to get enough REM and deep restorative sleep, he fails to say anything about what to do if you are a female kind of person. How would a woman reverse the course of age? Would she not, for example, go through menopause? Because that’s a thing that ruins the sleep of every woman who lives. She might get it back, in her final years, but for a good long time, she will not sleep well. And while she’s not sleeping well, the internet and medical establishment will continually scold her about not succumbing to stress which “makes everything worse.” Yes, my dears, that is so.
Anyway, not to sound bitter or anything, but the fact is, I listened to this 47-year-old man describing his exceptionally perfect biomarkers in the same window of time that two people I have considered essential have died. Brian Johnson may be able to “turn back” his biological age day by day, but what would it mean if he actually didn’t die?
What would he do, century by century? Who would he talk to? What would he read? Who would he worship? What kind of work would occupy him? His work right now is not dying. Would it always be like that?
The problem, as I see it, is that death is the pin upon which this whole, dying cosmos turns. Everything dies. People die, plants die, civilizations die, industrial parks die, restaurants die, ideas die. There isn’t anything under the sun that won’t eventually die. And it is awful, and it shouldn’t be so, but it is.
The strange thing about Brian Johnson is how he has missed the most crucial bit of information about humanity—that it is subjected to death. Everything that we do, one way or another, causes some kind of destruction, even if we don’t intend it. Every way we try to save life we tragically lose it. Every new invention we make comes round to bite our heels. Look how excited we all were, a hundred years ago, about plastic, and now we’re breathing it in and it’s killing us. And this is actually a very blessed thing. For who, really, would like to live forever with the way things are now?
I don’t. Brian Johnson’s health routine sounds miserable. He says he’s having fun, but he already looks like a ghost. No. It’s better to welcome death when it comes—hopefully not too soon, but honestly, it doesn’t really matter—and step over the threshold into the world to come where the sun and moon are no more and the Lord is our Light and our Glory.
That said, for Lent maybe I will work on my sleep “protocols.” That’s what they’re called, apparently. I will also work on dying to my own expectations of myself and the world and will walk in the way of Jesus as I am called to do, past the cross, up to that still, quiet tomb on Easter morning where death lost its sting. For, verily verily, Brian Johnson is doing a vain thing. When Jesus comes back he will live, either always dying forever, or just having a nice time in the New Jerusalem like a sane person.
Ok so, gotta get on the road and get to my conference which I have been mistakenly calling Our Bodies Ourselves, which is the name of a terrible book that you should never read. No, the conference is Ourselves, Our Souls and Bodies. It’s not my fault that I got it wrong. I’m not getting enough sleep.
Cheerio!
The guy Anne describes is a guy who is bound under the law. He may not see it that way, but he knows it. He feels the accusation every time he bites on a bean not sourced from some strange place. He is not free despite what he says to people. The only solution to his miserable bondage is Christ and his holy absolution. For freedom Christ has set us free. Once that absolution is handed over death no longer stalks and the law is at an end. Here’s what else, the beer tastes better and so does the cheese Anne writes of enjoying.
Ha. I remember that awful uberfeminist book. I was wondering about the wisdom of naming a Christian conference that. I'm glad to see it was YOUR mistake. ;)