The Lincolnian Cage

Cage stage is a kind of short hand for when someone gets “woke” to something. Whenever someone, usually a man, comes to a new realization or great awakening intellectually they’re so unbearable that they need to be put in a cage for a while to work out all their big new feelings.

I never really had a cage stage with anything (my mother and ex wife would probably disagree) until I realized how awful Abraham Lincoln was. I’m not sure how long or even just how unbearable I was during this stage, but I know it was bad.

I realized recently that I had finally made it out of the cage when I started calmly discussing something related to Lincoln. The hate and anger was just kind of finally gone.

The most common cage stage is Calvinism. When someone becomes a Calvinist…watch out, heads will roll, and friendships will end. It’s almost never pretty.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason I’ve only really been aware that I had one cage stage is that I’m sorta always in a cage stage, about basically everything. The more I think about it the more cages I see, in my own life.

I went through a Romo cage stage where I literally couldn’t handle anything bad that happened to him or the cowboys, and I talked about it incessantly with anyone. Same thing with Dak. I eventually got over it.

I think the Lincolnian stage was just the worst one, in part because you look and feel a lot like a racist while you’re posting all kinds of weird crap about the civil war all over Facebook. There’s this weird leaving the matrix feel to it all. You preface things with “I know this sounds racist but” and then drop some constitutional knowledge on an unsuspecting civilian.

The one thing there doesn’t seem to be a cage for is Anglicanism. Anglicanism represents such an inoffensive form of Christianity that there’s nothing for the convert to really fight about. We’re so ecumenical it’s led to some really bad doctrinal deficiencies especially amongst ECUSA. When I finally admitted I was Anglican, and had been secretly one for a long time, it was just such a relief. It feels like being Anglican has given me less stuff to fight about with other Christians.

The cage state is honestly kind of fun…stressful but you make a lot of weird memories. Hopefully as I mature I will find fewer cages and more wisdom.