David McElroy

I went to see the new movie “Moms’ Night Out” Friday. This family-friendly comedy isn’t something I’d normally see, but the film was shot in Birmingham by local directors and producers, so I wanted to see how many locations I recognized and how I liked their work.

I enjoyed seeing local streets and buildings that I know well, so I’m glad I went. I’m not really the target market for the movie, but it will probably do well for a low-budget family comedy (even though the reviews have been pretty brutal).

When I got home, I happened to put something down on the mantle above my fireplace. When I picked it up a couple of minutes later, I stood there for a minute and stared at some things I normally forget are even there — the awards that my one and only short film won almost 10 years ago.

I stood there and just stared, as though I was seeing them for the first time. And I berated myself once more for not making anything since then.

I shot “We’re the Government — and You’re Not” in December of 2004. Post-production was finally finished by the beginning of June 2005 and I started entering it into film festivals. Over the next 18 months or so, it was shown at 20 festivals and won five awards. In addition to U.S. festivals, it was screened in Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand.

Although it was my first film and I bumbled my way through the process at times, it was more successful than I ever dreamed it could be. It’s been seen on YouTube by close to 350,000 people since then.

As I stood there looking at a few of the awards Friday evening, I wasn’t sure whether to feel angry or ashamed for not having done another film. I saw myself as a filmmaker at the time. I have at least half a dozen scripts at various stages of development, ideas that I’m happy with and think would be good films. So why haven’t I done anything else?

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I’m afraid of dying. I suspect most people are, but it’s not something we talk about much. I find that every time I’m forced to think about death, it makes me more eager to think more intentionally about life.

There’s nothing in this world more certain than death, but there are few things that most of us would more strongly prefer to avoid even thinking about, at least for ourselves. I presume it comes from the unspoken fantasy or delusion that we’re going to live forever. Nobody really believes that, but we sometimes act as though death doesn’t exist if we don’t acknowledge it for ourselves.

Two things made me think strongly about death over the weekend.

First, I saw a movie over the weekend that deals with death and the afterlife, and it left me thinking a lot about the subject. The movie was “Heaven is for Real.” If you believe in an afterlife, you might enjoy the film. If you only believe in a material world and that consciousness ends with death, you would have no interest.

Second, I finally listened to last week’s episode of the public radio show, This American Life, which was about death and taxes. The segment about death dealt with what it’s like to be around those in hospice care — what’s it like to be the dying person, what’s it like to be family of those people and what’s it like to work with them. The stories were sobering. (I encourage you to listen to the segment.)

As a Christian, it’s easy for me to say, “Yeah, I believe I’m going to heaven and there’s nothing scary about death,” but that’s far too simplistic. It is for me, anyway.

There’s nothing that could be more terrifying to me than the idea of ceasing to exist. If I believed that I would cease to exist — my consciousness would be no more — I would find life and morality to be pretty empty in whatever time I had left. Other people believe in a purely material world and accept the idea of the end of their own existence and find ways to say life and morality have meaning. I don’t understand their way of thinking — as they don’t understand mine — but I only point it out to say that we all find beliefs that give us whatever we need to continue to exist where we are.

Materialists would say that those who believe in life after death have fooled themselves in order to give our lives meaning so can live today. Those of us who believe in the spiritual world see the materialists as contradicting themselves, because if there’s no ultimate meaning and no life after the human body dies, everything here is meaningless, in our view.

I’ve always found it interesting that in Paul’s letters to churches in the New Testament, he referred to us as having “hope” of a life in heaven after death. Although I’ve heard it interpreted in various ways, it always struck me that maybe Paul wasn’t so certain about exactly what happened after we died. If that were the case in some way, I’m with Paul. I don’t know what happens.

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Government would work great if we could just elect “the right people.” Right?

If we had honest, intelligent, principled people who believed “fill in the blank here” — whatever you happen to believe — the politicians would work for The People. Government would work for all of us. We would restore the Constitution and the meaning of the Republic. And on and on. All we need is to elect “the right people.”

Have you heard this song before?

As someone who makes the case that the existing system is broken by design — and is immoral by design — this is the response I hear most frequently from well-meaning patriotic people. Whether they’re on the progressive left or the social conservative right or some other position, they honestly believe the majoritarian system will produce what they want — if we can just elect “the right people.”

In the Republican primary here in Alabama’s sixth congressional district, voters have a chance this year to elect someone who is exactly what they always claim to want. Paul DeMarco is a two-term state representative with a spotless conservative record, and he’s a candidate for Congress following the retirement of the man who’s held onto the spot for years.

I know Paul well. Nine years ago, I worked as a consultant for his first campaign for the Legislature, and he became one of my favorite clients ever. (I dug up an old piece of his literature to show you the logo I designed way back then, although the colors are off in this snapshot. It was really PMS 200 and reflex blue, just in case anyone cares. The typeface is Folio, which was my trademark typeface at the time.) Paul is very intelligent, honest, principled and level-headed. He’s willing to listen to people who disagree with him, and he wants to understand other positions and come up with solutions that make everyone happy. He’s a problem-solver. He’s exactly what a civics textbook would dream of as the ideal politician.

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