No secrets. I love the Walking Dead. It is by FAR my favorite show on television. What started as a story about surviving the zombie-apocalypse has evolved into a story about what it means to be human. The Walking Dead title does not refer to the numerous zombies which populate the show, but the fact that the wear and tear of survival gradually strips the humanity of the characters in the show. Some characters are set up as villains (such as the mildly psychotic "Governor" in the current season), while others are rivals who "lose it" (such as fan favorite Shane in season 2). Even the stalwart leader of the group, ex-sheriff Rick Grimes, has spent several episodes experiencing increasingly vivid hallucinations. It seems like, to Rick, that non-reality is more compelling than reality. An attack from the Governor's private army keeps him from losing touch completely.
One of the compelling ironies of the third season of The Walking Dead is the juxtaposition of two situations: Woodbury and the prison. The Governor runs a modern town named Woodbury, where citizens live walled in from the zombie threat and isolated from the post-apocalypse. They wear clean clothes, have limited electricity and have picnics. They also live in a thinly veiled savagery. The town's entertainment is a Colosseum-like experience where contestants have to face each other and chained zombies. Newcomers to Woodbury are appalled at how callously the citizens treat the constant threat.
On the other hand, the main core of survivors have fortified a prison for their home. Beyond the irony of a prison being an ideal place to live, the prison has none of the comforts of Woodbury. The prison is full of zombies which are (mostly) sequestered from the main cells, although a few always sneak through. The prison fence is broken in areas and allow zombies to get into the main field, providing for regular encounters with the population. There is no electricity in the prison, and people sleep in bunks at the cells. But the people there have a picture of reality. They know what zombies are like and are committed to the common purpose of one another's survival. But they have no creature comforts. How do they possibly survive or even thrive without the Woodbury-like isolation and protection? They enjoy precious conversations, the joy of a shared joke and the common tie of family which holds them in all situations.
It is not hard to draw the parallels to non-zombie-invaded society. With the world being ravaged the way it is by crises of disease, war and hunger, those reading this post likely are doing so in Woodbury. You have enough. You are not scraping by to survive. And there are people across the world who are scraping by to survive who are enjoying moments of shared smiles, common joy and helping one another. Middle-class America, on the other hand, struggles with some of the worst depression, highest addiction rates and vicious domestic violence. And if you haven't experienced the despair of addiction, you may know the exasperation of living vacation to vacation, or surviving until "this season is over." And I could easily write a series of posts about the thinly-veiled savagery of a society which lets execution videos go viral.
I have told my coach "My goal is to get to (Day X), then my schedule will clear up." And sometimes that is true. What is far more likely is that I am living in a different kind of Woodbury ignorance. My world is directly affected by my choices, but I sometimes live in ignorance of that fact. Would I need to live vacation to vacation if I chose the abundant life offered to me in Jesus Christ (John 10:10) today? Would our society be the most self-medicated society in human history if we acknowledged that our lives are producing the exact result they are designed to produce? And would it be possible that we would experience resurrection in this life if we believed the promise of true rest in Jesus Christ?
As for me and my house, I see no better time than Lent to decide the Abundant Life over the Walking Dead.
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