The Wondering Years: How Pop Culture Helped Me Answer Life’s Biggest Questions

by Knox McCoy

We’re introduced to the setting of Pride Rock with a broad lyrical rumination of how we are all very much connected, through an Elton John song, which, I think we can all agree, is the most obvious vehicle for a rumination like that.

Mufasa like they are BFFs, despite probably not being naturally simpatico in the wild.

Like Johnny Depp gains strength from playing weird characters or Taylor Swift grows more powerful from relationship complications, so too did Rocky gain strength from getting punched.

This feels like a good spot to emphasize something important to know about me: I’m addicted to analogies. They’re my go-to hack for making sense of the world.

I was a kid. I wanted to have my birthday party at McDonald’s four years in a row. What did I know about anything?

And it has been during this process of change that I realized how you can be grateful for something while also being occasionally discontent with it.

On a fundamental level, I loved God. But on that same level, I also wasn’t 100 percent sure I could trust him.

My pastor’s mastery of service punctuation is the reason I accepted Jesus into my heart more than five thousand times.

Then I would try again to get close to her face and cover her eyes with my hand, praying on her behalf to accept Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior so she might spend eternity with God, me, and any other dogs I managed to convert.12

think you know this by now, but it bears repeating. I was a weird kid.

And even more, our culture is hungry for receipts; people want proof on whether Christianity is truly a faith of hope and love—or a wolf in hope and love’s clothing. That’s why we Christians have a serious problem if we aren’t consistently demonstrating which it is through the fruit of our actions. And to me, the more insidious issue is that some of us don’t even care enough to address the question—and what we’re doing to cause it. Conversion shouldn’t be motivated by threats of hell, shouts from a bullhorn, or the allure of dog treats; rather, it should be motivated by love and trust.

Why? Because it was easier to label people with a word that allowed me to dismiss them than it was to understand their complexity.

loud about what you don’t like and don’t approve of—but wouldn’t you rather celebrate what a miracle all of this is?

It’s easy to shine a light on what you disagree with and reject; even now I could fill a whiteboard with a list of don’ts instead of dos. But I’m doing my best to say “E my S” to that attitude, even if I still feel a bit of shame that I’m quoting that noted heathen Bart when I do so.

Q: “Why are there so many more pictures of my older sister than me?” A: “Because the excitement of having a kid had worn off.”

that does feel like God’s most primo masterstroke of all: that neither the Sajaks nor the Trebeks of the world can solve the supernatural puzzle that is the essence of God.

There’s a cheesy cliché you’ve probably heard: “Not all who wander are lost.” But the truth is, not all who wonder are lost either. I like that because it gives me room to be specifically uncertain within a larger, faithful certainty.

Big V showed up and had Peter Pettigrew sizzle Cedric so hard that he turned him into a vampire and sent him to Oregon to hang out with Kristen Stewart.

I know Harry Potter is about so much, but to me, it’s about the process of growing up and the realization that all the layers of protection in your life—your parents, your friends, your mentors, your church—exist to support you, but they do not exist to do your life for you.

but just like you can’t build a love story on Big Freaking Sweeping Gestures, you can’t build a faith like that either.

In thinking back on this, salvation now seems a lot like the infinity stones in the Marvel Universe—certainly the point of all the superhero efforting, fighting, and smoldering, but the journey to those stones might actually be the point.

“On Wednesdays, we wear polo shirts, jeans, and weave belts. Get in, loser. We’re going to youth group.”

surprise when it isn’t God evaluating the fate we deserve—it’s all the people we interacted with along the way.

I’d never even considered that because I’d never had to consider anything beyond my experience. Which is why representation matters. When the only reality we are forced to consider is the same color and belief system as our own, it narrows our lenses and funnels us more deeply into ourselves and more superficially into the reality of everyone else who hasn’t experienced the same lives we have.

Yolo!” We all recognize this as a grotesque mutation of the once-profound Latin phrase carpe diem.

Fortunately for me, it did. I consider Ashley’s and my marriage to be the Mean Girls of Lindsay Lohan’s IMDB. But I know a great many others that turned out to be Herbie: Fully Loaded.

I was aiming for something like my dad, crossed with Simon Cowell from American Idol, and spliced with Miranda Bailey from Grey’s Anatomy, but I was probably more like Michael Scott from The Office.5

“No Heineken for me, thanks. If I want my life ruined, I’ll ruin it for GOD thank you very much.”

You know the difference between discovering a new TV show to binge versus watching The Office for the eleventeen trillionth time? That’s what my faith felt like. There’s wasn’t any enthusiasm for it, just like I don’t think anyone sets out to build their night around watching Jim and Pam’s wedding episode on a loop. You kind of just end up there because it’s easy and familiar. But as comforting as easy and familiar can be, you start to feel the discomfort that asks, “Is this it?”

Strong both in heart and spirit, steadfast in love, and able to resist the pull of evil? That’s the kind of noble character I’d be honored to share a description with.

I came to a crossroads where I had to reconcile how the people in the Bible intersected with the principal antagonistic elements from Jurassic Park.

My sister and I were urged to not google it, which is probably good advice for most any kind of information you dread.

I’ve had my fill of telling people the particulars of what they should think just because it’s what I happened to think.

God would always be bigger than I could conceive, yet more accessible than I could ever know.

KNOX (Pterodactyl screech of rage)

Because never forget what Abraham Lincoln said: “If you love a book reader, let them go. If it was true love, they’ll come back and definitely read your next book.” Good ole Abe. He really knew his stuff, didn’t he?