Let’s see. I feel an urgent need, right now, to write about news coverage that has nothing to do with Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.
There is, you see, a side of my journalism personality linked to those long-ago days when I was an entertainment reporter-rock columnist. Also, when I taught at a seminary, I spent most of my time trying to get future pastors, religious educators and counselors to realize that, for ordinary Americans, “signals” sent via entertainment matter way more than those in news content. That’s tragic, but true.
So let’s flashback to that New York Times feature that ran not so long ago under this headline: “Matthew McConaughey Wrote the Book on Matthew McConaughey.” Let’s skip the second deck of that headline since it contained the obligatory reference to “all right, all right, all right (or in Texan, that would be '“alright” or some other spelling with an extra “w” or “h” in there somewhere).”
I was curious if this book — or perhaps I should say this Times feature about the book — would make any references to this complex superstar’s take on Christian faith. Maybe a reference to his infamous, by Hollywood standards, Oscar acceptance speech in 2014? You remember, when he said:
First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human kind. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.’ ”
There was more, but we’ll leave it at that. It was kind of a short “Pilgrim’s Progress” with his trademark twang.
The Times feature does use the safe b-word — “beliefs” — but doesn’t seem very interested in the who, what, when, where, why and how. Thus, readers are told:
... McConaughey wants readers to look beyond the boldface name on its cover and focus on its fundamental message. No one can escape hardship, he said, but he can share the lessons “that helped me navigate the hard stuff — like I say, ‘get relative with the inevitable’ — sooner and in the best way possible for myself.”
Codifying his beliefs and putting them down on paper was one test. The next challenge comes as McConaughey releases “Greenlights” into a world that feels increasingly unsettled and dismissive of values systems — one where, like millions of Americans, he and his family have spent the past several months spent “trying to outrun the ol’ Covid,” as he put it.
“I’m still continuously testing and updating my philosophies, practically daily,” he said. “And I can do better at a lot of them.”
Finally, there is a vague reference to a specific set of pews.
The key is that the actor’s faith appears to have been viewed through the lens of a kind of Marianne “A Return to Love” Williamson lens, something that would not be very threatening to the Times congregation. So read the following very carefully, referring to passage in the book that:
… shed light on the transcendental side of the author, who is a practicing Methodist but also describes himself as “an optimistic mystic,” forever fine-tuning his personal dials in search of further broadcasts from the universe. That approach to existence has sent McConaughey hunting for what he calls “greenlights” — the traffic signals that mean go, which he prefers to spell as a single word and which he believes take skill and acumen to identify.
To conclude that life is all about luck, he said, is to surrender to fatalism: “Quit letting yourself off the hook, McConaughey. If that’s true, then run every red light. You’ve got your hands on the wheel. You’re making choices. They matter.”
McConaughey said he has no interest in being anyone’s spiritual guru and did not approach “Greenlights” as a work of self-help. Friends say that yes, this is really how he talks and that his book is one more way that he is trying to express himself.
Wait a minute. I have some questions.
First of all, was that “broadcasts from the universe” phrase something that McConaughey came up with or did that New Agey wording come from the Times team? And even if that quote did come from the actor, are we sure that he was talking about the “universe,” as opposed to the “Universe” — with an uppercase “U”?
Also, note that his “approach to existence” (Again, is that wording from the Times or McConaughey?) isn’t a tangent in the story of this man’s life. We are talking about the concept behind the actual title and thesis of the book. Life is full of “red lights” and “green lights” and these choices are real and they matter.
You can tell that something is going on here that makes the Powers That Be uncomfortable, because of this passage in the Times feature:
... Sometimes he expounds at greater length, like when I asked him how he appears to stay out of America’s toxic culture wars and cultivates liberal and conservative fans alike.
“I’m trying to keep in with it and not out of it,” McConaughey replied. “For those people who say there’s nothing but yellow lines and dead armadillos in the middle of the highway, I say to you this: the armadillos are just fine. Because the right and the left are so far out, they’re not even on the asphalt anymore. They’re in the frickin’ desert.”
But the big question remains: Are we talking about the “universe” or the “Universe”? Or maybe even the God of the Bible?
Any journalist willing to make a few clicks with a computer mouse can learn the answer to that in a minute or less. Consider, for example, this “Good Morning America” visit:
This press-tour discussion pivots, toward the end, on the revelation that McConaughey’s favorite verse in scripture is St. Matthew 6:22, which states:
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.”
Thus, when one of his sons was born at 6:22, that led to the name “Leviticus,” or “Levi” for short.
Say what? Well, the apostle Matthew was also known as “Levi” and McConaughey wasn’t interested in a Matthew Jr. burden on his son. Thus, the actor’s New Testament knowledge led to a different take on the life of that apostle.
That rather implies that we are talking about a specific form for the Deity. Also, there is this rather detailed passage in a 2014 Q&A with GQ:
Does your family go to church every Sunday?
Yeah. In Texas. It’s non-denominational. It’s based in the faith that Jesus is the son of God, that he died for our sins, but many different denominations come in. …
When you talk about God, do you imagine him as ...
The Prrime Moovah! The Waave Maker!
But it’s an identifiable presence? Someone who can hear what you’re saying?
Yes. And somebody who can help answer my questions. Someone who has a hand in all of this miracle we call life, which I believe is a miracle. But, see, at the same time, I completely believe in evolution.
Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
[long pause] Well, it’s a heaven of a story, ain’t it?
The Times feature, needless to say, does Not. Go. There.
Let’s just say that the piece is, to use an old GetReligion term, “haunted” and leave it at that.
Of course, it would be possible to say that this large, obvious, God-shaped hole in the “Greenlights” story is the result of laziness or bias. Or, as Bill Moyers would say, maybe the team at the great Gray Lady is simply tone deaf to the music of religious faith in the lives of real people — due to a lack of cultural and intellectual diversity.
Just saying.