Christ and Cartoons #2: Pokemon

Originally posted on my previous blog on October 22, 2017. This version has been edited for length and clarity (and given pictures).

***

My parents actually banned me and my siblings from Pokemon when I was about 7 years old, as they didn't think that the show promoted good morals. Fifteen years later, for a reason that only God knows, my brother asked my mother to lift the Pokemon ban, and to our pleasant surprise, she did. (To my parents: thanks, and I'm sorry.) Despite the ban lasting more than a decade, we never really did forget the adventures of Ash and Pikachu and their friends, and we were happy to catch up on the whole thing in our free time.

Around the same time that our Pokemon ban was lifted, I got into another habit: listening to sermons from my favorite preachers in the morning before the day started. This has really helped me grow in my faith and become more emotionally stable as changes and trials come. Whenever I listen to a sermon before starting the day, I feel like my whole day goes better; it's like spiritual breakfast in that sense. I was listening to a sermon this morning called "I Am The Plan" by Jarrod Wells. He talked about the Triumphal Entry that Jesus made into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, a week before his death, and he focused on the animal that Jesus chose to ride into the city that day:

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.

I can only imagine what the first Palm Sunday looked like as crowds stood on the streets of Jerusalem laying palm branches and shouting “hail to the King!" for a carpenter from Nazareth riding both a donkey and her colt. It would have been an interesting sight. Jesus could have chosen any other ridable animal on earth--horse, pony, camel, anything--and it would have probably seemed better or more fitting for a king than a donkey. But Jesus said that he needed that donkey and her colt. He had committed himself to that animal, and no other one would do.

As I was watching the pastor preach about how the donkey was central to Jesus' plan at this point in time, it reminded me of the first episode of Pokemon Indigo League. (It’s a weird transition, but stay with me.) The first episode begins with an excited Ash Ketchum heading straight to his mentor Professor Oak's house on his tenth birthday. Ash is finally old enough to get his first Pokemon partner and to start competing in Pokemon tournaments. Sadly, he wakes up late, so even though he heads to Professor Oak's house as fast as he can, he finds that all the other young trainers have come and taken all the other Pokemon except for a small, yellow, mouselike Pokemon by the name of Pikachu. Cheerful as ever, Ash adopts Pikachu as his partner and starts going out into the world of Kanto to train. But as soon as he starts, he quickly finds out why Pikachu was everyone else's last choice. Pikachu is very rebellious; he won't listen to a word Ash says, and he and Ash are constantly at loggerheads. Pikachu will not get in its PokeBall (a ball where Pokemon are usually supposed to stay for transport), doesn't follow Ash's battle commands and continually uses its electric powers to shock Ash.

Ash’s very delightful first meeting with Pikachu.

Despite the pain and frustration, Ash doesn't give up on Pikachu and continually tries to get it to like him. Towards the end of the episode, Ash and Pikachu accidentally draw the wrath of a group of bird Pokemon, and these birds chase them and end up injuring Pikachu. As these bird Pokemon are relentlessly attacking them both, Ash begs Pikachu to get into its PokeBall so that he can protect Pikachu from any further hits.

Pikachu is overly aggressive, rebellious and lazy; there is seemingly no good reason for Ash to keep him. Ash's choice of Pokemon seems just as wrong as Jesus's choice of royal procession animal. Pikachu and the donkey were both stubborn, small, and not ideal for what they were about to do. And yet Jesus chose that donkey. Small as it was, the donkey ended up being integral for revealing Jesus as the promised Messiah, the one who would save the world. Many, many years before, the prophet Zechariah had predicted that the Messiah (Hebrew for "the anointed one") would come in exactly like Jesus did that day:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
(Zechariah 9:9 NIV)

When Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, he showed himself to be not just any king, but a king who would meet his people at their need and who would choose the marginalized to become part of his plan. He had been doing this his entire ministry: eating with tax collectors and prostitutes, reaching out to people across gender and racial boundaries, healing blind and lame people he found on the street. The crowds flocked to him not just because he had claimed to be King, but because they knew that he was a king for the people, that he would help them. Within the week, he would be sentenced to death, crucified, and resurrected from the grave as our risen Savior. Everything he did that week was of utmost significance for revealing God to the world, and it all started with that donkey.

Have you ever felt like Pikachu, or that donkey? Have you ever felt insignificant, forgotten or thrown by the wayside? Let me ask another question: have you gotten used to being thrown by the wayside? I'm not asking if you like it, I'm asking if you've ever felt resigned to being marginalized, like it's all the world has to offer you. You've been in that corner so long that it's become part of your identity, and you're scared to try and leave because you're afraid that it won’t work. I think this was Pikachu's problem in the episode. We don't know how long he was in Professor Oak's house; he could have been there for years getting passed up by every single trainer. By the time Ash came and actually chose him, he was probably so resigned to the fact that he would never get to fight like the other Pokemon that by the time the chance came for him to fight, he was ready to forfeit. He believed he was made for that corner of Professor Oak's house!

In case you’re questioning my sanity at this point, this doesn't just apply to Pokemon. I heard a story one time of a doctor who moved into an inner-city neighborhood in Chicago to work at a clinic. This doctor was white, and his neighbor was a 64-year-old black man. They got to know each other over the next few years, and like any good neighbor, the white doctor eventually invited his neighbor over to his house, only for the black man to deny him. This scenario was repeated over the next couple of years with the same response, until finally the older man accepted. The day the older man finally came to the doctor's house, he made it into the doctor's foyer. He stood, frozen, for several minutes, visibly scared until finally he burst into tears, he said, "I'm not supposed to be here", turned, and walked out.

It is an incredibly scary, yet sadly common thing, where people get beat down for so long, pushed into a corner for so long that they no longer can envision a life for themselves outside of that scenario.

Love can pull you out of that corner. Love (not puppy love or erotic love, but sustained, real love) will free you from the prison of low self-esteem and empower you to have a vision for your life. Love will enable you to give yourself a chance, and it will bring out things in you that you never even thought possible before.

I know this to be true for myself. Five years ago, I was a sophomore in college who had lost all hope for herself. I wasn't doing well in school at all, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and I was intractably lazy. I contemplated leaving college probably on a daily basis. Sometimes, I thought of giving up on life itself. My parents prayed and prayed and prayed and refused to believe they had lost their daughter. At one point that fall I realized that they would not let me give up college or life because they loved me too much to let go.

A couple months later, I went on a medical missions trip to Senegal, and that entire week, I was surrounded by the presence of God and the love of that entire team. In that atmosphere, I became a person I thought I'd lost forever, a person who really loved people and countries and whose dream was to travel the world and empower people.

I came back from Senegal a totally different person. I realized that I was a child of God with many, many dreams and purposes that he would help me carry out. Five years later, I have a college degree from Harvard and I'm now in medical school! I am living proof of what love can do!

If you get anything from this post, I want you to know that (at the expense of being corny) God chooses you. Yes, you, with your flaws and mistakes and quirks and questions. He accepts you. He has wonderful plans for you, and they're good plans, not bad ones. He can take your mess and make your life beautiful. You just have to ask if he can help you.