I begin with an old joke…

One concerned partner calls the other and says, “Dear, be careful driving home. I just heard there’s a maniac who’s been spotted going full speed the wrong way up the freeway!”

“I can’t talk right now! There isn’t just one maniac going the wrong way,” he responds in between exclamations of amazement “there are hundreds of them!”

The punchline, of course, is that the partner driving home cannot imagine he’s the maniac going the wrong way.

With that in mind, I plan to say three things in this post:

• Americanized-Christianity might be in a similar boat (car). Despite concerned phone calls, it has little imagination to entertain the possibility that it is the one going the wrong way.

• Rene Girard provides fundamental insight into the ways our desires are formed through relationship and the way we are formed through desire.

• Thor: Love and Thunder, for all its quirkiness, might be calling out Americanized-Christianity while leveraging Girardian insight to reveal new pathways for all of us.

I should define what I mean by the hyphenated behemoth of a phrase, American-Christianity. I’m using it to signify something ideological rather than something religious. Ideology is that set of beliefs we turn, and return to, to help us cope when something ruptures our expectations. (Not to say that coping is wrong. Sometimes, that’s about all we can do, so if you’re comfortable with the way your outlook helps you cope, then more power to you. But, if you’re looking for something more robust, flexible, and applicable to your current life then it’s possible that you are mired in ideology. If the shoe fits, wear it, if not, no problem.)