I believe in big foot. I mean I really believe. However, I am not a big foot enthusiast. I don’t collect souvenirs or chart the latest sightings of big foot on a huge map I have tacked to the wall of my man room. I won’t bug you about some late night PBS shows I saw documenting the history of big foot, and if you ask me about big foot, I probably won’t show much enthusiasm.
Still, I am a big foot believer. I also believe in aliens, the Loch Ness monster, secret societies, and the Holy Grail. All in all I pretty much believe in any far-fetched, imaginary, or straight out kooky half crock thing that comes down the pipe. Why? Because believing in these things costs me nothing, and having a world that is filled with these mythical, even imaginary creatures, is so much more interesting than the alternative that I will gladly give my belief over to these phantasms.
I like to think of this as Patrick’s wager. A little play on the classical wager of Blaise Pascal who thought that it was safer to believe in God than not, because the payoff for believing and being vindicated in that belief were higher than any alternative.
I remember one time I was asked by a friend, Raven, if I would like to accompany him to the midnight premier of the newest incarnation of the Star Wars saga. While we were standing in line waiting for the doors to open I casually said to him that I was “a huge Star Wars fanatic from way back,” and that I could remember going to the first Star Wars movie with my brother and his friend Jim in 1976 who sat next to me reading the opening paragraphs with tremendous excitement, and that the experience had forever hooked me on the franchise.
Raven looked at me dumbstruck. For weeks he had been talking about going to this premier. It was clearly a big deal to him. “Why”, he asked, “had I not said anything about my excitement sooner.” I looked at him quixotically. “Why would I?” I thought.
The truth is I have never really understood people who are impassioned by their beliefs. I mean, I wanted to go to that premier badly, but I wouldn’t have been crushed if I hadn’t, and certainly I would never have entertained the idea of dressing up as a Storm trooper or Han Solo for the occasion, any more than I could imagine myself wandering out into the woods of the pacific northwest hunting for big foot. Nor will I ever want to vacation in Loch Ness on the off chance that I might accidentally spy Nessie while relaxing in a rowboat.
That being said, going to the premier was awesome; largely because I was going with someone who had looked forward to this moment for months. It was awesome the way sitting next to my brothers friend had been awesome. There is something about being around impassioned people that is contagious. I don’t know if I ever thanked either of these men properly for that experience. But their enthusiasm had shaped my way of thinking and helped my world become a larger and more interesting place
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
you got a demon on you
About sixteen years ago I was sitting on the back porch of my parent’s house with a friend who, as it happens, was about half my age. We were talking about random stuff when the subject of Nostradamus came up and she admitted to me that she was scared, really scared, about prophecies that foretold the end of days. I looked at her with calm and a reassurance that one can only give another when two people are in completely different places on a topic like this and said something like, “The end may come at any time, all we can do is live the life we have today. The future will take care of itself.”
I know, straight out of a Hallmark card. But it did the job. She later confessed to me that she found the conversation so comforting that she never looked back. For myself, I never really though about it either until this morning when I was catching up on my friend Stuart’s blog and read the following: "Oh yeah. I was horrified of all that end of the world stuff as a kid. The devil. Hell. I thought I was going to hell because I cussed. Because we didn't go to church." It reminded me that there was a time when I was scared of the devil, scared of the end, scared of all the unseen things that go bump in the night, and that what was more, I have no recollection of the time in which that shifted for me. I didn’t have that sudden realization, or comforting talk like I had with my friend all those years ago. I suppose I just grew out of it, which may explain why, sometimes, for no apparent reason, I still slip into crazy little phobias like being afraid of the unseen.
The other day I picked up a book that I read years ago called The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels. I thought it would be a fun topic to offer to my Adult Sunday School class so I began rereading the book. It starts out talking about the Jewish wars of the late first century, and the persecution that early Christians felt both from the Romans as well as from other Jews who saw these followers of Jesus as radicals and a splinter group that threatened the orthodoxy of the Jewish Church. It talks about the us/them dynamic and how people used language about evil and Satan to characterize the actions of others, to demonize them in order to justify your own cause and to place that cause in the context of a greater cosmological battle that give greater credence to your own spiritual views.
Pagels talks about the original context in which the name Satan was used. Satan, an angel of God, it sent to oppose those that go against the will of God, literally Satan is the angle that is supposed to go stand in your way when you are walking away from God. The Greek word diabolos, from which we get the word devil, literally means “one who stands in your way. “ I read this and I felt like I finally understood Satan. Satan was just this misunderstood angel that was trying to help us. Far from being demonized, it was our own short sightedness that prevented us from understanding the motives of the "Lord of Darkness" and more, God’s will for us.
Recently, I shared these thoughts with a Facebook friend, an evangelist pastor in New York State. As you might expect he listened to me patiently, told me he understood my point of view and then went on to say that he had seen real demonic possession, that it was terrifying and real his exact words were “I have seen demonic possession before ... Christianity can be very cooky (sic.) because of the supernatural that flows at its core, and people can get strange when they talk about it, really flaky. Many times they forget biblical fact. Pat[rick] I pray you never have too [see anything like that], its scary and sad.”
I have to admit I dismissed my friend as superstitious and a little…well… backwards. I am ashamed to say that my thinking was something like “you poor ignorant bastard.” And I retreated back into the safety of my scholarly novel about Satan, assured that I would find in its lofty pages arguments that would further cement my intellectual authority.
Pagels’ own words on the subject took me by surprise. “ Many liberal-minded Christians have preferred to ignore the presence of angels and demons in the gospels. Yet Mark intends their presence to address the anguished question that the events of the previous decades had aroused: How could God allow such death and destruction?... The gospel writers want to locate and identify the specific ways in which the forces of evil act through certain people to effect violent destruction… The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces.”
Catch that? There are a couple of ways that one can read that last sentence by Pagels. But the end all of the matter is that, regardless of Satan’s role specifically, there are demonic forces as described in the Bible, and that as some point Satan becomes the character which personifies them. So, even if Satan is just a scapegoat for all of these other demonic forces, contending with the presence of these other forces is not as easy as saying they are simply misunderstood.
In the conclusion of her book, Pagels states that it is precisely in the demonization of others that evil is wrought, and that Jesus message was one of tolerance and acceptance. She points to such Christians as St Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. who “stood on God’s side without demonizing their opponents” and states quite plainly that ”otherness” is the true root of evil and that, in the words of Jesus, that reconciliation is divine.
As a teenager I read a lot of my father’s science fiction hand-me-downs. One series, in particular, comes to mind, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson. The story takes place in an alternate world of magic known as “the Land”. In the first Chronicles, Thomas is magically transported to “the Land” and struggles with his acceptance of this new reality even as he must face an ancient evil that threatens to destroy “the Land.” In the second Chronicles, Thomas is again transported to this magical place, only to discover that it is two or three millennia later, that all of the good he had performed had been erased, that evil had infiltrated every aspect of life in “the Land”, and that his task is made all the more difficult be Thomas’ own his bottomless well of self-loathing, confusion, cynicism and rage.
Sitting here writing this, I am reminded of this series, though I have not read it in more than twenty years. I marvel at the parallels. Here I sit, two millennia after the death of Jesus, looking that the words of my friends and calling him a simple ignorant fool. I say these words to myself and to him, not out of some sense of malice, but because, in my own self righteous sense of superiority I think that calling him these names will somehow make him a better person. The truth is that whether or not I believe in demons, I perpetuate demonizing and “otherness.”
I suppose this is why, though I have never had that turn around moment where I realized the superstitious thoughts of my childhood are just the stuff of fancy, I still get those insecure moments where I believe in things that go bump in the night. I have those moments because I, and not some supernatural entity, perpetuate them and give them strength. I create these demons, and I allow them to roam freely in my life, and until I look unflinchingly at that behavior they will remain.
I know, straight out of a Hallmark card. But it did the job. She later confessed to me that she found the conversation so comforting that she never looked back. For myself, I never really though about it either until this morning when I was catching up on my friend Stuart’s blog and read the following: "Oh yeah. I was horrified of all that end of the world stuff as a kid. The devil. Hell. I thought I was going to hell because I cussed. Because we didn't go to church." It reminded me that there was a time when I was scared of the devil, scared of the end, scared of all the unseen things that go bump in the night, and that what was more, I have no recollection of the time in which that shifted for me. I didn’t have that sudden realization, or comforting talk like I had with my friend all those years ago. I suppose I just grew out of it, which may explain why, sometimes, for no apparent reason, I still slip into crazy little phobias like being afraid of the unseen.
The other day I picked up a book that I read years ago called The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels. I thought it would be a fun topic to offer to my Adult Sunday School class so I began rereading the book. It starts out talking about the Jewish wars of the late first century, and the persecution that early Christians felt both from the Romans as well as from other Jews who saw these followers of Jesus as radicals and a splinter group that threatened the orthodoxy of the Jewish Church. It talks about the us/them dynamic and how people used language about evil and Satan to characterize the actions of others, to demonize them in order to justify your own cause and to place that cause in the context of a greater cosmological battle that give greater credence to your own spiritual views.
Pagels talks about the original context in which the name Satan was used. Satan, an angel of God, it sent to oppose those that go against the will of God, literally Satan is the angle that is supposed to go stand in your way when you are walking away from God. The Greek word diabolos, from which we get the word devil, literally means “one who stands in your way. “ I read this and I felt like I finally understood Satan. Satan was just this misunderstood angel that was trying to help us. Far from being demonized, it was our own short sightedness that prevented us from understanding the motives of the "Lord of Darkness" and more, God’s will for us.
Recently, I shared these thoughts with a Facebook friend, an evangelist pastor in New York State. As you might expect he listened to me patiently, told me he understood my point of view and then went on to say that he had seen real demonic possession, that it was terrifying and real his exact words were “I have seen demonic possession before ... Christianity can be very cooky (sic.) because of the supernatural that flows at its core, and people can get strange when they talk about it, really flaky. Many times they forget biblical fact. Pat[rick] I pray you never have too [see anything like that], its scary and sad.”
I have to admit I dismissed my friend as superstitious and a little…well… backwards. I am ashamed to say that my thinking was something like “you poor ignorant bastard.” And I retreated back into the safety of my scholarly novel about Satan, assured that I would find in its lofty pages arguments that would further cement my intellectual authority.
Pagels’ own words on the subject took me by surprise. “ Many liberal-minded Christians have preferred to ignore the presence of angels and demons in the gospels. Yet Mark intends their presence to address the anguished question that the events of the previous decades had aroused: How could God allow such death and destruction?... The gospel writers want to locate and identify the specific ways in which the forces of evil act through certain people to effect violent destruction… The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces.”
Catch that? There are a couple of ways that one can read that last sentence by Pagels. But the end all of the matter is that, regardless of Satan’s role specifically, there are demonic forces as described in the Bible, and that as some point Satan becomes the character which personifies them. So, even if Satan is just a scapegoat for all of these other demonic forces, contending with the presence of these other forces is not as easy as saying they are simply misunderstood.
In the conclusion of her book, Pagels states that it is precisely in the demonization of others that evil is wrought, and that Jesus message was one of tolerance and acceptance. She points to such Christians as St Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. who “stood on God’s side without demonizing their opponents” and states quite plainly that ”otherness” is the true root of evil and that, in the words of Jesus, that reconciliation is divine.
As a teenager I read a lot of my father’s science fiction hand-me-downs. One series, in particular, comes to mind, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson. The story takes place in an alternate world of magic known as “the Land”. In the first Chronicles, Thomas is magically transported to “the Land” and struggles with his acceptance of this new reality even as he must face an ancient evil that threatens to destroy “the Land.” In the second Chronicles, Thomas is again transported to this magical place, only to discover that it is two or three millennia later, that all of the good he had performed had been erased, that evil had infiltrated every aspect of life in “the Land”, and that his task is made all the more difficult be Thomas’ own his bottomless well of self-loathing, confusion, cynicism and rage.
Sitting here writing this, I am reminded of this series, though I have not read it in more than twenty years. I marvel at the parallels. Here I sit, two millennia after the death of Jesus, looking that the words of my friends and calling him a simple ignorant fool. I say these words to myself and to him, not out of some sense of malice, but because, in my own self righteous sense of superiority I think that calling him these names will somehow make him a better person. The truth is that whether or not I believe in demons, I perpetuate demonizing and “otherness.”
I suppose this is why, though I have never had that turn around moment where I realized the superstitious thoughts of my childhood are just the stuff of fancy, I still get those insecure moments where I believe in things that go bump in the night. I have those moments because I, and not some supernatural entity, perpetuate them and give them strength. I create these demons, and I allow them to roam freely in my life, and until I look unflinchingly at that behavior they will remain.
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