The eCrozier

Living with Yourself, a new series on Netflix starring Paul Rudd, is a highly entertaining comedy that also raises some profound issues about our human condition. Here’s the premise: Miles Elliot has a good job, a loving wife, but he’s still in a funk. He just doesn’t feel right or fulfilled or whatever, so he listens to a co-worker about how he had improved his life by going to this special spa. Miles wants this improvement, too, so he goes to the place called Top Happy Spa, even though he’s completely unaware of what the spa really does. At the spa, the attendants put him to sleep with an anesthetic gas after telling him he’ll be like a whole new person when he wakes up.

He actually wakes up that night buried in a forest wrapped in plastic and wearing only an adult diaper. He digs his way out, makes it to a highway where he gets his bearings, and then finds his way home on foot (no one picks up a hitchhiking adult wearing a diaper in the middle of the night!). There, he finds another version of himself. He learns he’s been cloned at the spa with all his imperfections removed. The old Miles was supposed to be dead in the forest, so the new Miles could live on. I won’t write any more as I don’t want to spoil the rest of the series for you. It’s worth your time to watch.

The conceit of the show asks the question (among others): What would you do or how would you react if you met a perfected version of yourself, one with no blemishes or flaws? That person is creative and energetic at work, empathetic and tender with their spouse, and kind and considerate to the rest of the world. And that person is that way all the time and not so inconsistently like we are. This idealized version of yourself, just by their presence, would constantly let you know just how you don’t measure up.

If we’re honest with ourselves, it’s hard enough at times living in the world with people who’ve achieved more than we have, who are smarter than us, or who appear happier than we are. That’s called envy and we all suffer from it to some extent. Envy is admiration gone sour by sin. Let me explain. At one time or another, we all find ourselves admiring something someone has done or said or some achievement they’ve accomplished. That’s all well and good. But then the admiration stops and the envy takes over. We want to have said what they’ve said. We want to have achieved what they’ve accomplished. We want what they have. Our envy of others serves as a reminder of how we aren’t as good as they are (or, at least that’s what we think).

In Living with Yourself the cloned version of Miles serves as a reminder that his old self is inferior to his new self. The show’s irony is Miles now finds himself envious of himself! If such a thing happened to us, the cloned, perfected version of ourselves would serve in much the same way St Paul understood the Law (Torah) in the Bible. God’s Law is perfect. Our failure to keep it completely exposes our sin and fallen-shortness, which leads us (hopefully) to rely not on our own capacity to keep God’s Law, but on the merits and mediation of Jesus on the cross, which we call Grace. Living with Yourself exposes the human condition complete with the all the human (little l) laws we have for one another in our relationships. It’s very good (though not perfect) TV theology.

+Scott