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| Paul Pfeiffer’s John 3:16 Belief does not ring your doorbell and talk you into conversion: it knocks you from your horse and blinds you. Sports enthusiasts have seen how some savvy born-again Christians couple spreading the Word with supporting the home team. Strategically seated within TV-camera range, they await a score then rise with the cheering crowd to wave their placards proclaiming the Good News of eternal life—John 3:16, their magic-markered poster boards read. These missionaries favor the sports arena not just for its free access to the eyes of millions of potential converts, but because both personal experience and scripture tell them that unadulterated belief first flowers as rapturous adoration, a kind very similar to that which can instantaneously transform a disgruntled ticket-holder into an elated suppliant. Will this fervor inspire a shift of loyalty from power forward to Son of God? Hard to say. But even the most uneventful games produce a few profane revelations. The basket, the touchdown, the goal: these arouse the little ecstasies that convince the doubtful, reward and reaffirm the belief of the faithful, and fuel every fan’s yearning for future glory. These days, of course, lack of consensus has taken its toll on the institution of belief. And yet the instinct to believe—in anything —remains irrepressible and ever scanning for targets at which to lob itself. Like the house cat twitching for the bird beyond the windowpane, we hunger for elusive truths. While most of us would probably prefer to be shown the path to eternal salvation, not to mention plain old bliss, we would settle for the consolation prize of a cogent alternative to moral relativism. In a quotidian pinch, we will embrace anything that fills the need at hand. Outside of the houses of gods and athletes, the ruins and revivals of belief can be observed in the raptures of a child at a puppet show, a scientist at the instant of discovery, a convalescent inhaling aroma-therapy’s fumes, lovers in the bedroom, atheists in rational disputation, a jobless insomniac illumined by an infomercial at 4 a.m.—even me as I chase these scattering words. When we happen upon something worthy of our fickle devotion, when we believe, our myopic wonder temporarily, happily, eclipses all else—including the corrosive thought that what we truly crave is not the object of our attention, but the hypnotic palliative of belief itself.Paul Pfeiffer’s John 3:16 satisfies the craving—sort of. At first sight the pulsing orange orb irresistibly transfixes us. A few breaths later we can assess the surprisingly low-tech apparatus that holds it aloft, aching for regard: A compact, thickly flat video monitor is projected, feeler-like, into the space on the end of a wall-mounted, attenuated pole and hovers just high enough that only the taller-than-average can meet it at eye level. This cathode-bright shadowbox houses the scintillating relic that first caught our stare: a single golden spherical digitization, the concentration of five thousand monkishly preserved frames of NBA games gone by. Here for close scrutiny is the bald mystery of the basketball, looped, pinned dead-center, and stripped of all but the residue of cause and effect. From this perspective the game for which this ball exists is an inconsequential, pixelating trace of grappling hands and color. It would seem that the game’s appeal for the viewer is not its sweaty skirmishes, multimillion-dollar personalities, and superhuman feats. The spirit that moves us is the mesmerizing whirl of the ball-in-play—velocity itself—and once and for all we can behold its simple grace. But there is something vaguely embarrassing, a bit unseemly, about being so enamored of such a vivid nothingness. It is the money-shot on infinite repeat, and look at it is all we can do. As both non-players and viewers of mere footage, we are doubly restricted from live action. Shards of the Cross and retired jerseys, rosary beads and dildos—like all surrogates for absent objects of desire, John 3:16 straddles the cusp of what we want it to be and what it is, and thus frustrates while it satisfies. We observe the ON/OFF switch from the start, note the electronics that power the illusion, yet we indulge, seeing just enough shadow to warrant behaving as though we believed in the imminence of the thing casting it. The most potent idols elicit this kind of cycle of longing, which is one reason why gods and lovers alike jealously proclaim them taboo. |
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| Dare Dukes |