shall we get ice cream?

When you said you were wavering, is that all it is? Well... How could I feel anything more than that, Barth? Can't you just let it happen? Let it go like the other day?

i'm not god's favorite son... i'm not god's favorite son either.

Cuz we could read it as Barth covering up those panoptic surveillance theologies and instead offering a kinder secular presence for Tanrak, one that can invite Tanrak to taste the pleasures and the hardships of the world instead of cloistering himself away from his own desires and reality. Barth invites him to try food beyond the walls of the campus, to break the rules and explore a world where he has to work for scraps. Barth makes fun of the sacraments and doubts God and the Church’s teachings. When he steps in front of the signs, he offers an alternative to God, an alternative that is tangible, smelly, singing (sometimes off-key), licking his lips, and undoubtedly seeing Tanrak as he is, someone who can love him now instead of in the hereafter.

But we could also read it as a metaphor for Christ. If the communion wasn’t obvious in episode 2, episode 3 doubled down into near heresy. “Jesus took the bread and blessed it and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’” For Catholics, this is literal. Christ’s body is transubstantiated into every communion bread or wafer. Barth jokingly asserts his body is transubstantiated in the donut, rendering himself as Christ. If you take that symbolism to the signs, Barth is the “God” who is seeing Tanrak. He is the “I” Tanrak should trust is with him, and not an “I” as any person but in the sense of Christ’s identifier, the “I Am.” Transubstantiation is similar to the idea of incarnation, and one of the most important verses for that idea in relation to Christ is John 1:14, “The Word became flesh.” The Word of God, the divine stories and prophecies was made human through Christ’s birth and life. In Ticket to Heaven’s use of signage with Barth, he’s an incarnation of the literal words of divine promise on the wall. He’s God incarnate.

Now, to have Barth be an entire second-coming would be a dire sin, but there are certainly theological arguments to be made about how one can represent incarnation through stories and how one can view the divine presence in experiences and others on Earth. The secular world is God’s instrument, used to communicate with the faithful.