Darkness, of Sorts

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“The horror! The horror!” During high school I was never assigned Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Neither was it required for the humanities core course at a highly selective Grove City College. Knowing that my daughter will be reading it for school, I decided to get ahead of the curve for once and read the book. I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I had gathered that it was set in Africa, but that is all I knew. I had even somehow managed to live through the ’80’s without ever seeing Apocalypse Now. Conrad layers the darkness thickly in his story of greed and cruelty in the material trade of ivory. The brief story does not dwell or linger on the suffering, but shows the deep scar never healed in Kurtz’s famous last words. It is a story still worth pondering profoundly.

By chance—in as much as anything happens by chance—I also watched Wolf Creek the same weekend. Again, I was unsure what to expect. I had heard about the movie before, but never with enough detail to give away the plot. Harshly critiqued for its exploitative narrative, the film presents a different setting that experiences the same darkness. Australia, 1990’s. Claiming to be based on actual events, Wolf Creek showcases the frightening duality of Mick Taylor, a character who holds many sleepless nights in store for me. Not that the movie itself is so terribly frightening, but the fact that people like Mick Taylor do exist, upon whom movie makers and novel writers base their characters, is darkness itself. It is the lot of humankind to be a mixed cast of characters, some of whom are decidedly unsavory.

I awake to newspapers bearing the cold, inhumane sentiments callously blasted from the lips of Santorum and Gingrich and their ilk stating that the poor can take care of themselves, the unborn have a right to be born into abject poverty, that women should be made to bow to the whims of men. My native naivety has worn off but slowly, hoping as I always have for sparks of kindness and genuine good will. Those who would be remembered as great leaders would do well to study closely the portraits of Napoleon and Stalin and their friends. And read a little Conrad. To find the still beating heart of darkness we need not venture all the way to Africa or Australia. We can find it in our own backyards.

NASA's view

Christian Underworld

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For constructing a mythology teeming with monsters, I must doff my metaphorical hat to the Underworld series of movies. Unrelentingly Gothic and stylish, I’ve watched the first two installments a number of times, but I have yet to see the last two (the latter of which is still currently in theaters). I have to admit that seeing Kate Beckinsale in her werewolf hunting gear two stories tall on midtown electronic billboards is some enticement to catch up with the story. Over the weekend I rewatched Underworld Evolution, number two in the set, to refresh my mind of the story. Quite apart from the implicit religiosity of vampires, the Underworld movies, while eschewing crucifixes and religious origins for vampires (which Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola narrates to an explicit extent), nevertheless partake of the power of religion amid all the shootouts and weird transformations.

In Underworld Evolution, Marcus, the son of the original vampire, in a scene straight from Christian mythology, has the devil rebelling against his creator. As he is killing his powerful yet ineffectual father, Marcus predicts the beginning of a “new race created in the image of their maker—their new god. Me.” As he says this he has his own creator impaled on a demonic bat wing. Running him through with a sword he states, “And the true god has no father.” I admit I’ve been trying to read some post modern treatments of monsters, and this kind of reversal fits well with the conflicted outlook of the twenty-first century. Who is god? The good or the evil? The old certainties have grown gray and blurry. No wonder some people are uncomfortable.

Perhaps the most religious element in the film, however, is blood-memory. Blood is a cheap commodity in horror films, but it represents, in the Abrahamic traditions, life. In the Christian sense drinking communion wine is to consume the blood of Jesus, or at least to remember his death (the fancy word is anamnesis). Vampires, in Underworld Evolution, remember the lives of those whose blood they drink. The taking of life has a sacramental quality to it here. To a world less immersed in a Christian worldview, this concept might seem more macabre than it already is. Monsters often take their cues from the gods. So on a February weekend some of this feels terribly familiar. It may be a small underworld after all.

Denying Truth, For Profit

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Sometimes I’m questioned about why I bother with creationism. Everyone who’s intelligent knows it is religious ideology masquerading as science and people will eventually figure it out. But will there be time? An editorial in yesterday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger pulls the curtain back on creationism’s incestuous cousin, climate-change denial. As the editorial notes, key documents of the Heartland Institute—one of the major propagators of climate change as “just a theory”—have been leaked and show that they have learned their lesson from creationist tactics. They want “debate the question” instilled in science classes in lieu of facts. And much of their money comes from big oil. It is the hope of such institutes that an American public already woefully pathetic at understanding science will be led to believe “just a theory” equals “likely not true.” The data are stacked completely against them and the entire rest of the developed world knows that.

While the issue may seem less religious than creationism—which is based on getting Genesis 1 in the classroom as science, no matter what you call it—it has deep roots in that same insidious cocktail of politics, religion, and dirty money. Biblical literalists tend to believe the world is about to end. The belief has been around for at least two millennia. It is a damning and damaging belief that declares the world was made for raping because it is about to end. This deranged thinking is fueled, literally, by unrestrained economic interests. Sometimes the groups can’t see beyond the Bible to realize that they too are being screwed. Science is objective, and it is science that has been challenged by various religious and political groups since the 1920s. Today, when there is far too much information for anyone to stay on top of it all, and in an American society deeply distrustful of higher education, I smell an explosive amount of methane in the air.

Climate change is real. The “theory” is so well supported by evidence as to be fact. Is anyone really surprised that supporters of the Heartland Institute have also backed Newt Gingrich’s campaign? We have placed ourselves in a very dangerous position as the last remaining “superpower.” I tried to read a book on environmental issues that Routledge published, but was so scared after the first three pages that I had to put it down. What is the lesson here, class? Is it not that money is the root of evil? And that, my dear literalists, is biblical.

The future of human economic evolution

Fall of the Planet of the Apes

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Perhaps it is being under the influence of a head-cold that just won’t go away, or perhaps something deeper, I decided to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Raised in a fundamentalist household, I was enamored of Planet of the Apes (the original one) and watched it and all its sequels repeatedly back before VCRs made owning such chestnuts possible. Perhaps it was that taste of forbidden fruit—evolution—that left such an exotic buzz in my head, or perhaps it was the unforgettable climax. The message that we’ve done this to ourselves. I once even missed seeing a high school friend after several years’ absence on a visit home because an all-day Planet of the Apes marathon was airing on TV. Perhaps it was the subtlety, the Rod Serling feel to it, or the deep level of empathy it evoked, for whatever reason, that original movie remains one of my personal favorites. In Rupert Wyatt’s slick new backstory, something was missing.

The CGI of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty remarkable, except for the occasional jerkiness of violent scenes intended to pump up the testosterone. The subtle emotions visible in Caesar’s every glance conveyed the sense that animals share rights to this planet with us. I’ve been reading about animal intelligence again, and it saddens me that we’ve reached this far in our development only to continue the fiction that homo sapiens are unique among the tree of life. It’s not much of a tree when one of the branches is not and never has been attached. Our animal cousins have much to teach us, and perhaps that’s why I keep returning to Planet of the Apes, despite Charlton Heston. Even the new movie makes several nods to the original with naming the main family Rodman, Caesar building a three-dimensional puzzle of the statue of liberty only halfway complete, calling his mother “Bright Eyes,” spraying Caesar with a hose in his cage and calling the primate center a madhouse, and the cheesy repetition of “Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!” It simply can’t rise to the level set by the writing of Rod Serling and Michael Wilson.

The box-office success of the film tells us something about ourselves. Ironically, and perhaps intentionally, Wyatt’s version neuters the evolution. The apes don’t rise from an unspeakably long evolutionary track from us, but we create them with the nemesis of twenty-first century humans, the virus. Caesar and his friends are genetically engineered by humans, and God has nothing to do with it. In the original, a theological subtlety lingered as a religious court of orangutans condemned Taylor for religious reasons. His claim of human primacy was heresy to primate sensibilities. The new version takes itself too seriously for that. We can’t jangle the evolution keys anymore because of our own national schizophrenia concerning the raw power of nature. Just when we think we’ve evolved beyond petty superstition masquerading as righteousness, yet another state attempts to guillotine the entire scientific enterprise. It’s a sure thing that if the apes don’t get us, we’ll take care of it ourselves. That was the message already in 1968.

Ultimate God

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In a recent op-ed piece in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Ben Krull published a satirical piece entitled “Strategizing God’s election campaign.” While some, no doubt, took offense at the piece, it is less an indictment of God (Krull is a lawyer) than it is a broadside against those who use God to get elected. As portrayed in the Bible, God is not always a likeable character. As Krull points out in so many words, God is a guy with “issues.” Would he ever be elected on a family values platform? What is happening here is that God is being recast as those who most vociferously claim him an ally want him (always him) to be. Using Yahweh as a springboard, they vault over the compassionate Jesus and land firmly at the disapproving God of Jonathan Edwards, who, along with the God of John Rockefeller, wants them to be rich. It’s not as much an election as it is a catalogue where you can order just the deity you want. The God they claim America follows is a god of their own making.

Paul Tillich, a theologian, once famously declared that God is a person’s ultimate concern. While other theologians instantly and continuously disputed this, the idea still has some currency. The distorted versions of Christianity that we constantly see in the political and sports scenes today is a god that adores the free market and loves football, especially when the Broncos are playing. Somehow, incredibly, he couldn’t get tickets for the Super Bowl. If you listen closely you’ll see this god resembles nobody so much as Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann—wait a minute… has god packed up and gone home? Since undisputed God sightings are as rare as undisputed UFO sightings (maybe even rarer) we are free to fill in the enormous lacunae with our ultimate concerns. Ourselves.

At least in the world of polytheism you had a choice of gods and a ready source on which to blame unpleasantness. If Baal’s not answering your prayer, maybe Anat is standing in the way. Ancient folk were not conscious of the fact that they were making gods in their own image, after their own ultimate concerns. But modern Christians, trapped with the God of the Bible, feel that they can at least give the big guy a makeover. This is God on-demand. The beauty of this deity is that he is a poseable action figure who is a picture-perfect image of one’s personal ultimate concerns. A God so malleable, so fluid, and so idiosyncratic should have no trouble getting elected. To find the God of popular politics, just look in the mirror.

Who does your God look like?

Wired for God

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I am not now, nor have I ever been, a techie. When my fascination with the newest technological marvel borders on the rhapsodic, I suddenly realize it’s all electrons and immediately the fascination dissipates. It feels like an illusion. I am a guy who likes the sensation of a paper book in his hands and prefers conversation accompanied by all the subtle biological clues of being in the same room with somebody. Maybe it is lack of imagination on my part, but I will often get bored on the Internet and pick up a book instead. One book I recently picked up, and one that challenged my perception of reality, was Rachel Wagner’s Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality (Routledge, 2011). Wagner is one of that generation of younger scholars who is asking what the implications of electronic culture are for religion. If concepts such as online prayer walls, chat-bot salvation, and storing sacred texts on the same device as secular ones intrigue you, do yourself a favor and read this book.

As Wagner ably points out, religious individuals are tapping into the vast communications’ potential of the Internet to spread their faith abroad. There are apps to help you pray online, there are electronic games to prepare you for the fictitious rapture, and there are virtual churches. We have indeed sealed God in an Xbox, and we have beamed the divine across wireless networks and learned to confess our sins in cyberspace. And physicists are starting to confirm that, at our most basic level, we are energy rather than matter after all. Maybe we are tapping into ultimate reality here. Wagner explores how the level of engagement with virtual worlds constructed by software engineers (the new gods) becomes so intense as to provide an alternate reality. It all depends on how you define what is real. And it is clear that for many people, life without the Internet is now unimaginable. Those of us born before the supercomputer scratch our physical heads with amazement. How did Nebuchadrezzar or Alexander ever conquer the known world without GPS technology? Does my iPhone have a secret life about which I know nothing?

Within our culture live many older people who have never touched a computer. They exist alongside grandchildren practically born with some iDevice in their grasp (may be a choking hazard for children under three). I have lived long enough already to have witnessed keyboarding being replaced by thumbing, and research having shifted from long treks to the library in the snow to a few taps on a glass screen that can feel the electricity from my chilly fingers. From the comfort of my lonely room sings my soul, how great thou art! Perhaps Terminator didn’t go far enough, perhaps Skynet really is god. Maybe this matrix of blood, muscle, bone, fat, and spit is really just an illusion and the Internet is true revelation. Wagner pries open some very important questions in her book. And none of us should be surprised if, when we approach the pearly gates, we find a touchpad next to the electronic lock inscribed with this legend: “Welcome to Heaven. Please enter username and password. Type in the letters you see in the box below.”

Rising to The Abyss

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The name James Cameron has become almost synonymous with epic, large-scale adventures that suggest improbable world with stilted dialogue. The first Cameron film I watched with the awareness of his direction was Titanic. Last night I watched The Abyss for the first time. Of course, I’d heard quite a bit about the film since its release over two decades ago, and I had to satisfy my curiosity. The Abyss turns out to be a prognostication for Titanic as well as Avatar, what with the fascination Cameron has for sinking ships, friendly aliens, and impossible love reconciled. In fact, many of the characters presented in The Abyss appear to reincarnate in Cameron’s latter films under different names, but in similar circumstances. The reason the film is worth mention on a blog about religion is its heavy reliance on traditional Christian imagery of the afterlife, projected into the abyss (turning Dante on his head).

When the crew of Deep Core investigate the sunken submarine USS Montana, crew member Jammer sees what he thinks is an angel and goes into shock that lands him in a coma (just to awake at the right time to save the day). The theme of personal sacrifice and resurrection (the Christ syndrome, we might call it) is acted out by both Lindsey Brigman and her husband Bud. Lindsey drowns herself so that she can be resuscitated, with the intention of saving both herself and her estranged husband. In his turn Virgil (aka Bud-everyone get the subtle reference to Dante here?) disarms a nuclear warhead (by snipping a single wire!) by diving beneath the capacity of his oxygen supply, texting his now adoring wife that he knew it would be a one-way ticket down. Then the aliens arrive. The whole light at the end of the tunnel trope becomes factual as the aliens-angel hybrids flutter over and take Virgil to safety. In case you missed the biblical references, they part the water and you get the strange suspicion that Moses is lurking behind the scenes somewhere.

Of course, some of these ideas will be fresher in viewer’s minds from Titantic and Avatar, but the theme of resurrection following self-sacrifice is a staple of Hollywood. It is the right combination for a feel-good movie, even if it ends up being sad. Perhaps it is the mark of living in a secular nation that has its origins in a Christian worldview. The battle of our religious status as a nation rages on, but the fact is, no matter how free we are with our religion, we will flock to movies where the protagonist willingly sacrifices him(less frequently her)-self with the reward of new life. This is not a Cameron trope, it is a United States self-image on the large screen. The technical gaffs of the underwater world of The Abyss may be many, but the film captured the imagination of many Americans, paving the way for the enormous success of Titanic and Avatar. Despite our tough exterior and willingness to start wars, we like to think of ourselves as the ultimate Christians.

A Long Way to Go

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“One of the greatest injustices we do to young people is ask them to be conservative.” The words are those of Francis Schaeffer. The Francis Schaeffer. Among evangelical circuits, Schaeffer has a status right up there with James Dobson, Ronald Reagan, and Saint Paul. At Grove City College he was viewed with such veneration that hagiography would be an understatement. Few realize that Schaeffer was a mover and shaker in the hippie movement until Roe v. Wade caused what might have been akin to a breakdown. Schaeffer transformed into what he once despised, the ultra-conservative trying to protect the unborn. While Catholic groups had been unsuccessful at capturing Jerry Falwell’s sympathy for fetuses, Schaeffer would win. His book, A Christian Manifesto, published the year I started college, was required reading for religion majors. Abortion had now been taken on as an “evangelical” issue.

Fast forward a few decades. Karen Handel, erstwhile Georgia gubernatorial hopeful, becomes senior vice-president for Susan G. Komen’s The Cure. Handel ran for governor on a pro-life platform. The Cure (temporarily) withdraws funding from Planned Parenthood—the idea that every child should be loved and esteemed is less important than every child should be born. With those little tiny feet. And as it turns out, hopefully with little tiny penises as well. Divide and conquer. Women against women. The Margaret Thatcher syndrome. Call it what you will, but abortion as a religio-political issue revolves around women’s rights. Anti-female legislation has had a long and sordid affair with Christian theology, reaching back to medieval witch-hunts and Catholic sacerdotal declarations. What is sometimes excused as ignorance in less developed societies where women are routinely brutalized is given a Gospel air brush job and called “anti-abortion” in the United States. The real issue, the literal elephant in the room, is women’s rights.

The evidence on this is incontrovertible for anyone who is willing to open their eyes. In order for our culture—men hurling themselves at each other during the Superbowl while women are preparing food in the kitchen—to survive, outmoded gender expectations must be kept firmly in place. Even if you want to cure breast cancer—largely a plague against females—you do it so they can live to produce more males. Being raised with an absentee father, I learned very early that women had every right to equal treatment with men, but I also learned that it did not happen. The trick has been to get women on board to vote against their own best interests. Raise them up to think their religion, their God, demands them to be subservient. And if a man wants sex, it is a woman’s duty to comply. And abortion undoes all a man’s hard work in the bedroom, or backseat, or dark alleyway. Yes, these issues are complex and myriad aspects play into them. I say we call a quorum on the debate until one-half of the human race is truly given a chance to find its voice.

What does he have that half the human race doesn't?

Virtually Divine

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So I decided to try virtual reality for a while. I have been reading about the influence technology has on religion, so I thought a trip to Wikitude would be instructive. Now I don’t want to sling lingo like I’m some sort of real techie, but Wikitude is an app that shows the artificial worlds of virtual reality in your immediate environment. Many of us live our day-to-day lives without realizing that we are surrounded by powerful, invisible beings who can only be seen through electronic eyes. We have given our physical world an imaginary overlay that may turn out to be more real than reality itself. So I clicked on Wikitude and took a peek around my office on Third Avenue. Wikitude shows those things that I would have called “dialogue boxes” as a kid, but that now stand in for overlays against any mapped reality. In Manhattan there are many, many of them. I clicked on the one nearest my finger. It read, “A monster is destroying the city.” Like it read my mind.

In some ways I never got over the naïve realism I grew up believing. I first read about avatars in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Back then the idea of virtual worlds was still pretty new, and although Norman Spinrad and William Gibson had played with the idea earlier, the Snow Crash version is what stayed in my head. Avatars, I knew from my research on ancient religions, came from very early Indian belief. In what we now casually call “Hinduism,” some believed that gods came down and walked among us as avatars. Christians would later call this “incarnation.” In virtual reality, we are the gods and we descend into the world of human making as embodied electronic versions of ourselves. The idea, however, goes back to one of the most ancient religions in the world.

I’m not sure I feel safe in this virtual world I’ve discovered. I was relieved when I clicked on Wikitude the next day to find the menacing monster nowhere in sight. But is it really gone? The physical world has no shortage of ways to frighten the very sensibilities out of us. Many of them go by the name of religion. In this world, I can’t just click off the screen and be safe. It used to be that our simple, domed world had a divine bowl above it with a loving, if often very stern, parent watching over us. Now we have become that god, creating monsters and worlds to house them. Maybe that is the best answer to theodicy yet. When we create virtual worlds, we always include evil in the picture. Perhaps it has always been thus with the gods.

Reality or not?

Revealing the End

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I knew the end of the world was near when I saw the phrase “butt crack” in the Chronicle of Higher Education. As I turn over the February page in my 2012 Apocalypse Survival Guide calendar, I find that the Romans predicted an end of the world to arrive at 634. B.C.E. I’d say the Romans are still waiting, but they are long gone, the only residue remaining of their empire being the Vatican and its spiritual, rather than political, power. So why did the Romans think the end was near? It had, according to my calendar, to do with a dozen eagles being seen at once. In the spirit of Hal Lindsey we can parse that vision a bit. 634 was just 32 years after the infamous 666 B.C.E. Of course, no one knew it was 666, or even B.C.E. for that matter. Nevertheless, when God picks his super-three he stays with it. Thirty-two turns out to be nearly the traditional age ascribed to Jesus, but minus one year. Keep that in mind.

Eagles make occasional appearances in the Bible, but since God is a forward-thinking deity, the reference is surely to the United States! And how many colonies were there originally? Was it not 13? Again, the significant number is off by one. In some cases we might count this up as poor arithmetic, but with the subtle destroyer of the universe we know it is not only intentional, it is also significant. So, Rome saw the 12 eagles—the United States—in 634. What they really meant was the Maya, obviously. That would account for the missing one, since central America is less than the greatness that is the United States. And besides, there were twelve apostles, but when Judas was replaced by Matthias there were 13. What more proof do we need? These dozen eagles were indeed a divine sign. Only the world did not quite end in 634.

Maybe the problem was with the Julian calendar, or maybe the eagles were just confused. As my calendar says, “Antichrists been and gone” and yet we are still here. The transient nature of apocalypses never dampens the truly hateful spirit. We can’t comprehend this cobbled-together doomsday without at least trying to understand the evangelical despising of the world. This view is based on a quasi-biblical determinism that emphasizes God’s ultimate plan to destroy the universe that is only revealed in piecemeal fashion throughout select books of the Bible. But God is like a mystery writer who sadistically leaves out the last chapter of the book. The tension is unbearable. How much more before we begin to crack? But isn’t that what started this whole apocalypse in the first place?

The horsemen close in

Instruction, through Film

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In an increasingly technological world, the acquisition of knowledge often seems like a moving target. For thousands of years the process of research meant lifting yourself out of the chair, or couch, or log, and going to where the written collection of human knowledge resided—the library. Assurbanipal, emperor of Assyria, assembled a great library in antiquity, as did the sages of Alexandria, Egypt. From those days until my own lifetime, if you wanted to learn something you went to where the books resided. The birth of the Internet has changed knowledge storage considerably, but not completely. You might find bits of Assurbanipal’s Akkadian wisdom online (Alexandria’s, unfortunately, didn’t survive antiquity), next to thousands of e-books, blogs, and tweets. And of course, videos. Although many of my blog posts refer to horror movies, one of my favorite sources of information has always been the documentary. Despite the fact that it’s spoon-fed knowledge, there’s nothing quite like watching the experts tell you what you need to know on this or that topic.

Assurbanipal, lion hunter, emperor, librarian.

I was, naturally, pleased to learn of documentary-log.com. The folks from the site were kind enough to contact me since they offer many religion documentaries for free. I suspect that most readers of this blog have some interest in religion since I seldom write about anything else. Documentary-log.com currently has over thirty professionally made documentaries from various producers (including the History channel) available for viewing. Just sit back, click, and learn. I added to my own knowledge-base yesterday. This is particularly nice for those of us who can’t really afford the constantly increasing expense of buying access to television service. If your interests are greater than religion, they have many other categories of documentaries available as well. There are much worse ways to spend an afternoon.

One of the questions that arises in my conversations these days is whether all of the material online is changing knowledge itself. There’s no question that it’s a time saver. Prof. J. C. L. Gibson once remarked, while looking for a passage in class at Edinburgh, “So much of scholarship is turning pages.” He was a man who still did not use a typewriter, up to the day of his death. There is something to the old form of knowledge that stays with me as I watch the world inexorably change around me. There was a thrill to finding a book from 1516 on the open shelves at the New College library of Edinburgh University, to touching its centuries-old pages and marveling. Sitting in John Gibson’s office as he puffed on his pipe and trying to defend my new ideas against his old ones, I felt that knowledge was being hammered into me. There is an arcane knowledge to starting every day with a wee dram and a prayer that the World Wide Web just hasn’t managed to capture yet.

Tweeting the Bible

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I have an underused Twitter account. My life isn’t so interesting that I need to give my few followers (fewer even than those who read this blog) updates throughout the day. In fact, I mainly use it to let my Tweethearts know what I’m blogging about on any given day. While reading a book on the influence of technology on religion (more anon) it struck me that one of the more interesting aspects of biblical studies is the fact that the well never goes dry. For those who read sacred texts, there is no end of interpretation. I’ve addressed this before on this blog—religion is as individual as each believer. The more I read biblical interpretations, however, the more I see the subtle textures and layers that readers find in the text, despite what most religious leaders desire. And I don’t restrict this to the Bible—any sacred text can be read in multiple ways. The Bible, however, has been foundational for this person that I’ve become, and so I’ve decided to do some close reading.

I’m going to tweet the Bible. (If you are one of my rare followers, don’t worry—read on.) I’m going to tweet the maximum 140 characters per message once a day. For this task I will be using the King James Version, arguably the most influential book ever written in the western world. Doubt me? Watch a presidential candidate debate. Or google Girl Scout cookies. Why am I doing this? Well, I wonder what the Bible says when it is broken down into byte-sized nuggets. At character 140 I will stop, and the next day I will begin where I left off the day before. This exercise will be a way of looking at the Bible from a fresh angle. Besides, it’s been a few years since I’ve read the entire KJV. I don’t pretend that nobody else has thought of this—I’m sure there are many Bible tweets out there. I’m curious, however, at 140 characters a day how long it will take, and what will emerge. Yes, I know that there are mathematical whizzes out there who could calculate the answer in a matter of seconds, but I just have to see for myself. The doubting tweeter.

A new look at an old book.

There may be occasions when I fail—isn’t the Bible about forgiveness anyway? In my job I travel quite a bit, and sometimes Internet access is dicey. Most hotels, however, still sport a Gideon Bible, so resources should be no problem. It will be an adventure, and the Bible could stand some adventure these days. Besides, interesting pericopes will give me something to blog about occasionally. For those who haven’t been subjected to years of higher education on the Bible (or other texts), a pericope is a passage cut out from its surroundings. It is the favorite of televangelists and other proof-texters who prefer to not to face the larger implications of reading the whole Bible in its context. I like to think of this exercise as Internet hermeneutics. So let the adventure begin. If you are really bored and want to follow a glacially paced Bible reading, my Twitter name is stawiggins. When interesting observations emerge, however, I will let my blog readers know as well. In the technical age, life is tweet.

Cookie Time

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All right, who wants to be the big meanie now? The fact that politics manage to besmirch just about any human enterprise, no matter how noble, is a lesson many of us learn on our slow trek to adulthood. I sadly came to realize that the church is incredibly political, and that universities could rival congress for the backstabbing and posturing that goes on. In the midst of all this politicking, one of the truly good NGOs left in the world is Girl Scouts. Sure, there will always be some councils with personality issues, and some troops will have a difficult scout or parent with which to cope, but the organization is based on the principle of giving girls the confidence and assurance they need to be successful in life. What could be wrong with that?

My wife pointed out a story on Salon.com that reveals some anti-abortion groups are now claiming that Girl Scouts supports Planned Parenthood. This is patently not true. Even if it was, it would hardly be a crime to teach girls reproductive options (after all, when is the last time a Pope or President carried a pregnancy to term?), but since people don’t think with precision, it seems best to keep girls in the dark. Some right-wing groups are boycotting Girl Scout cookies as if the devil himself were the baker. Not to be outdone in perceived self-righteousness, some Catholic Churches are kicking out Girl Scout troops for supporting abortion! All of this based on a lie. The road to the unconscionable position of the Catholic Church toward reproduction has been long and mentally torturous. Anyone who has taken the trouble to trace the church’s strange love affair with the fetus may be surprised to learn how recent the concern became an issue and how very androcentric it is. The church’s claims here rely on nothing more than good old testosterone-generating glands and the love thereof. To punish the Girl Scouts for a fictitious association with an unapproved organization shows just how mature the largest church in the world truly is.

The male bias in the majority of the world’s societies is bad enough. The United States likes to hold itself up as an icon of fairness and equality. It is the spirit upon which this nation was founded. Except when it comes to females. We don’t want our girls to have reproductive autonomy because that might make men look somehow less masculine. As for those wimpy guys who like to read, the Bible backs them up completely on this issue. God is a guy, and made guys to be in charge. No matter how much education you offer, you won’t be able to change that one-book-fits-all outlook. What will we have lost if we seriously and honestly treat both genders equally (and even those intersexed individuals)? Only the apparently fragile male sense of superiority. I say, in the spirit of America vote for equality! Buy Girl Scout cookies!

Deliver us from evil.

Religious Capital

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Eric Weiner’s book, Man Seeks God, surely received a boost with an article in Sunday papers (originally written for the Los Angeles Times). In this piece, Weiner comments on the American fluidity of religion, how people pick and choose the spirituality that works for them. His observations are based on the results of a Pew Trust study that indicates about a third of Americans change their religion during their lifetimes. This is a departure from the age-old tradition of being born into a religion, something that still seems to apply to two-thirds of the American population. In his article Weiner suggests this is not entirely a bad thing, since people are consciously deciding on that to which they will commit themselves. I haven’t yet read Weiner’s book, but the situation described here has a potent underlying implication.

Religions tend to make claims based on certitudes and assertions of absolute truth. When religion becomes merely a matter of choice, has it not lost its very foundation? This may not be a bad thing, but it does change completely the essence of religion. No longer can religion be considered an inviolable truth handed down from on high if the truth is a matter of choice. Or, more troubling, perhaps we no longer seek truth. In a population based on personal satisfaction, religion becomes an extension of personal comfort. In a society where non-faith is suspect (most atheists still complain of being considered “evil” for their non-belief), people need to believe something—anything. We can’t test the truth in any empirical way, so we all have to admit to some guessing. When born into a religion, questioning is a sign of doubt. When shopping for a religion, questioning is a smart economics. Does this religion work for me? Is there one that suits me better? Is it worth the extra costs?

The center of focus has shifted from seeking the one, unwavering truth that is beyond us to seeking a belief that we can stomach. Religion is a commodity. Perhaps this development is inevitable in any society so dedicated to the free market that even common decency is labeled socialism. Is it possible for people who constantly think in terms of supply and demand to understand an absolute in one tiny sector of their lives? Choice becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. Its pragmatism indicates its origins. When people can choose a religion without consequences, it should be obvious that this is a human construct. Instead, we want to believe that our religion is the right one because that’s the way we like it. Perhaps the question we should be asking is whether our lifestyle is authentic or simply a fabrication made to suit our wishes. Our treatment of religion as a product to purchase and use reveals more about what we believe than does any creed.

The Evil Living

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Returning home from my campus visits, I needed some brainless relaxation. Since we don’t have any television service at home, this means watching movies. I’d heard quite a bit about The Evil Dead over the years—a movie that was scary back in the 80’s when it appeared. Improvements in special effects and the intensity of engineered sound are capable of drawing a person into an alternate reality for a couple of hours these days, and the endless reiteration of earlier movie effects somehow robs the early thrillers of their impact. The Evil Dead, however, capitalizes on confusion about the menace and teeters on the brink of morality for the entire 85 minutes. Naturally, when looking for a source of fear, it seeks a religious agent. The source of the evil in the woods is narrated in a voice-over of the presumably dead scientist who has discovered Sumerian texts that release demons in the forest (mostly in the form of falling trees).

Sumerian is always a safe bet if you want a language that your viewers will not be able to identify. The earliest known recorded language, Sumerian is still difficult even for experts, and it conveys all the strangeness of long ago. We do know that the Sumerians recorded myths that involve what we might call “demons” today, but the possession of humans was a much later development—probably a pre-scientific way of explaining epilepsy. As our five students seek a weekend getaway in the woods, they become possessed and face the moral question of just when a person ceases to be human. At what stage does someone have the right to kill someone else? Perhaps unintentionally, the movie gives us the answer, “Never.” This kind of morality has a place in America, one of the very few “first world” nations in which the death penalty is still legal. Often promoted by those dead-set against abortion. Where do we draw the line saying a person has crossed over into the unforgivable other?

The Evil Dead has become a cult classic over the years. Its relatively low budget of less than half-a-million dollars brought an astonishing box office return on the investment. The gore, tame by more modern standards, does not mask that what is really at issue here: the question of right versus wrong. What is truly evil? Sumerians aside, what possesses people and drives them to destroy one another? The Evil Dead, like many horror films, reaches for a religious answer. As the supernatural fog begins to clear, however, we might not like what we see in the clear light of day. Religion may be an excuse, but the assaults upon one another are what Nietzsche famously called “human, all too human.” The sooner we clear our vision and pay attention to what is actually happening, the sooner we can combat the horror.