Afghanistan

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As much of the world watches in dismay, the Taliban have taken over Afghanistan.  Most religious rule ends up being harmful to women, it seems.  We have centuries of male-run Catholicism showing how both witch hunts and heretic murder became common in Europe.  Do we expect any better now that religious extremists have taken over a nation next door to Iran?  The mix of politics and religion has generally not been favorable and unfortunately if the Republican Party could have its way we would see a similar thing here in the United States.  An ill-executed coup d’état on January 6 of just this year led to the epiphany that the Republican jurists would protect those who tried to overthrow the US constitution in the name of religion.  And we know how they feel about women’s rights.  We should look at Afghanistan and tremble.

It seems difficult to believe that less than a century ago we went to war to defend democracy.  Senators alive to witnesses the privations of war are now recklessly trying to remake America in the image of a fascist state.  Instead of looking at Afghanistan as a mirror, the only thing they can see is this is a Muslim nation.  Christians would surely never try to take over a capital by force.  They turn a blind eye to our own insurrection, not yet nearly a year old.  Ironically the book they claim to follow contains a often quoted but more often ignored statement: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”   It’s no accident that their intended victim was a woman.

Religious politics can be maintained by force of arms or legal maneuvering. Both are evil.  The result is the same either way: women and thinking people suffer while the self-righteous rule.  Even such basic assumptions as protecting their own people from a horrible disease by the simple expedient of a free vaccine has been politicized for purposes of keeping in power.  When the moderates in their own party speak up they are shouted down.  How different is this than the shouts of triumph heard in Kabul?  The alternative—government that allows the freedom to believe what you will as long as all people are treated fairly—has been made out to be a sin.  The god worshipped both by Republicans and the Taliban has little sympathy for humanity.  He, and most certainly he is male, is all about power.  We watch in dismay.

Photo by Joel Heard on Unsplash

Just Justice

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Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Like many people raised to believe in democracy, I’m distressed to see that the right wing, worldwide, has taken to a full-on attack against it in an effort to keep power.  In the United States Republicans that stood up against the cult of Trump (who was no architect, but a figurehead only) are now being run out of Dodge by their own party.  Meanwhile a friend in Britain sent me an article about the open and obvious corruption of Boris Johnson and how the Tories are completely overlooking it in an effort to keep “democratic authority.”  It wouldn’t be so bad if the right wing came right out and said “we want to run things, no matter what it takes,” but instead they appeal to religious ideas and try to make it seem like their side alone appeals to “justice” while doing the exact opposite.  Paging Mr. Orwell…

The best test case is Jesus.  Have you noticed how Jesus has fallen out of right-wing Christianity?  Apart from occasionally taking his name in vain, the principles they stand for generally go against the core teachings of the Gospels.  The fascism of the right wing has taken what good there was in Christianity and jettisoned the kernel to keep the shell.  It’s like a bag of pistachios where all the nuts have been discarded, leaving only the hard casings behind.  The really sad thing is that both in the US and in Britain, these power-mongers are in the minority.  They use political loop-holes to make their strong-arm tactics look like the will of the people.  Things like restricting voting access, made possible by courtroom politics.  Isn’t Justice supposed to be blindfolded?

We know for a fact that many of these same people are fully cognizant that fascism led to World War II.  They know Hitler used the same tactics to gain power.  They know that millions and millions of people died.  And now they trumpet the one thing that brought this nation together—the recognition that fascism was evil—as the way of true Christianity.  I’m sometimes asked if I believe in demons, having written a book on the subject.  Demons are, if you look closely, are considered the source of evil in the world.  Quite often stories about them have them possessing good people by pretending to be something that they’re not.  Can demons take over entire political causes?  Did we not see naked evil in the Nazi regime?  How do we not recognize it now that it has taken root in one political party that has claimed the name of “Christian” while simultaneously discarding the teachings of Christ?

Yankee Doodle

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Some books stay with you in a way that hits very close to the nerve.  Since I read Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court many years ago, memories of how it left me feeling prevented me from re-reading it.  That’s pretty unusual for Twain, in my experience.  I’ve read some of his other novels and there’s not a similar feeling toward them.  The racist elements are disturbing, but overall the stories manage to overcome some of the darkness with either levity or sarcasm.  The scenes that scared me off from re-reading Connecticut Yankee were the two episodes in which young women were murdered.  I realize Twain was simply being honest here regarding the cheapness of life in medieval times, but I found both these instances so saddening that I had a difficult time coming back to it.

Now, some two or three decades later the book speaks to me in a new way.  Something else I recently read reminded me of it, and I was struck at just how much Twain’s Arthurian peasants resemble the unthinking crowds of Americans who simply accept what people like Trump say.  One of Hank Morgan’s banes is how the uneducated refuse to question what they’re told.  In many ways this is humorously narrated but a dark undercurrent remains behind.  Twain had clearly supposed that nineteenth-century America had overcome this brainless gullibility.  A century and a half after Twain’s Connecticut Yankee we’ve clearly been involved in retrograde motion.  Twain levels much of the blame on the church.  His choice comments in this regard also still apply.

“I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought.”  So Morgan states in chapter 10, and indeed, in the novel it is the church that largely leads to the downfall of the civilization Morgan had built.  Or again, in chapter 17: “I will say this much for the nobility:  that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious.  Nothing could divert them from the regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the Church.”  Twain couldn’t admit in public,  even in his own nineteenth-century life, what he really thought about organized religion.  It’s pretty plain in his fiction, but disguising fact as fantasy is a tried and true method of getting at the truth.  If I weren’t so sensitive to the human plight, I might read it more often.

Integrity

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I’m not lying when I say untruth has been on my mind a lot.  A few days ago I posted on freedom of speech and how it’s an ideal rather than an actuality.  What with lies being lobbed at us daily, I got to thinking about the ethical implications for honesty.  Integrity.  The freedom to state what we actually think is something a little different.  How often in daily life do we act authentically?  And when we’re with others we act differently than when we’re alone.  Which is truly us?  Someone pointed out to me recently that if you walk with someone your body language is different than if you walk alone.  Even walking alone your body language shows your interior frame of mind.  A sad walk isn’t the same as a happy walk.

As social creatures, the ideal of being forthright all of the time would lead to chaos.  All of us lie, one way or another, at times.  That’s where integrity comes in.  Integrity, it seems to me, indicates someone who is honest, all things being equal.  I once noticed a politician who blinked every time he said the word “God.”  That blink, I believe, was a form of “scare quote.”  I don’t know, but I suspect said politician didn’t have any strong belief in a deity.  Some circumstances require that you pay lip service anyway.  Ethics dictates that we try to be honest, but even keeping secrets is a kind of lie of omission.  Our own personal wants—which are honest—often have to be suppressed for the sake of fairness.  Again, we live in a situation where the most powerful pursue their own desires while neglecting the needs of others.  Is this then integrity?

Often I ponder what it means to be social creatures.  Some of us are naturally introverts.  We nevertheless rely on others because society is too complex.  What any one person could build an iPhone single-handedly, and then set up the 3G, 4G, or 5G network on which to use it?  Could that same person grow their own food, manufacture their own automobile, and construct their own house?  The self-made rugged individualist is a myth we cherish, but it too is an untruth.  We rely heavily on others and we count on those closest to us to be honest.  When lying becomes a lifestyle integrity lies in tatters on the floor.  Just three years ago I wouldn’t have been having such thoughts, if I’m honest with myself.

First Christmas Parable

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The Christmas story is full of surprises.  This year near Bethlehem, a parable occurred to me.  Like many parables, it raises questions.  A question for all you men out there: when’s the last time you were pregnant?  Was it because some woman—who can’t be responsible for her urges—didn’t take proper precautions?  Isn’t this the way God punishes people for having the sexual intercourse he created?  Since God gave you an anatomy just like his, you certainly have priority in the cosmic scheme of things, but this pregnancy of yours—what are you going to do with it?  Oh, and don’t look to Onan for answers to your own urges; God stuck him dead for that kind of thing.  But that troubling “what if”… What if Mary had had a choice?  According to the Good Book she did.  “Be it unto me,” Mary said.  She could’ve said “No.”  Many men in your *ahem* delicate condition did not.  The problem with virginal conceptions is that people will talk.

Many people don’t remember at this time of year that Mary and Joseph were immigrants to Egypt.  Had the Nativity occurred today in these States that follow God’s word, Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus would’ve ended up in separate cages.  Wasn’t he born in a cage?  Oh, cave!  That’s definitely an improvement.  One wonders how the Gospel might’ve gone from there.  And what of those annoying buzzing creatures overhead calling for peace on earth?  Shoo!  Trade wars!  Tariffs!  Nuclear threats!  These were the gifts of the three wise men, were they not?  Or perhaps we should get biblical and follow Herod’s mandate.  Killing two-year-old boys isn’t abortion, after all.  After giving birth they’re your problem, not God’s.  You’ve got to get them born—that’s the most important thing.  And since women can’t possibly know what it’s like to be pregnant what are you going to say when they walk out and tell you, “It’s not my problem”?  “Be it unto me,” said Mary.

Shepherds, it should be noted, were the poor.  Ironically that first Christmas the good news was first revealed to them.  Herod, half-insane, kept shifting members of his government around.  He had put away his previous wives—perhaps because they made him pregnant—and assassinated all his rivals.  Unless that’s fake news—the old fox was known for that.  So the immigrant family thought it was safe to return after Herod was removed from office.  Jesus grew to espouse the message of love and acceptance—extending it even to foreigners.  The state, believing itself established by divine right, had him put to death.  It’s Christmas, and we’ve seen all this before.  If only those with eyes would see.  But parables, it seems, have gone out of style.

I Swear

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The ongoing political fiasco of our nation (and within several states as well), raises a very basic issue.  We trust our legislators to do what we pay them to do (they’re our employees) because they take an oath to uphold the Constitution.  Problem is, liars don’t keep their word.  When an elected official opts to lie pathologically rather than to tell the truth, how can we expect him (or her) to uphold an oath they took?  Doesn’t lying behavior suggest that they were lying when they took that oath?  A hand on the Bible means nothing if you don’t suppose God is waiting with a lightning bolt in the metaphorical Heaven described, none too clearly, in the Good Book.  This is the greatest crisis a democracy can possibly face—lying leaders.

This isn’t just alarmist talk.  Societies—even capitalistic ones—rely on a great deal of trust.  Those who don’t mean what they say end up on the business end of the Better Business Bureau, or fail to stay solvent.  There are laws that ensure you are protected if someone sells you a false bill of goods.  What then, if the highest office in the land is occupied by someone who can’t be trusted?  Instead of appealing to the rule of law to set such a person on the right path, the Republican (Church) Party has decided that lying is now a commandment.  I may be lying, but how can you tell?  If no one has the backbone to stand up and declare that the whole system has toppled, what can a nation do?  An even more worrisome fact is that there’s no going back once this has happened.  The Republican Church has instilled this behavior for three years and is showing no sign of repentance.

Oaths were taken very seriously in the world of the Bible.  Violating one (lying intentionally) was considered the surest way to arouse God’s anger.  Ironically the Republican Church, which claims to be biblically based, is, according to its own Scripture, angering God.  I often consider myself a cynic, but my cynicism falls far short of this.  Psychological studies have demonstrated that the average person is reluctant to outright lie when the idea of God is introduced into conversation.  God’s Own Party, however, has inured itself to that minor phobia.  The Good Book, after all, says God’s the father of lies, right?  If they’d bother to open that book they’re thumping, I think they’d discover that that is truthfully the worst kind of blasphemy a human can utter.

What Remains?

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As our government continues to pretend it has an interest in anything but enriching the individuals in Washington, a rather constant refrain of “broken system” has emerged.  It heard that phrase repeatedly in conversations in San Diego, on a variety of topics.  Now, I’m no stranger to buzzwords, but this strikes me as particularly apt to describe what we’re seeing.  A democracy within a republic builds safeguards to prevent the abuse of power, but when abuse of power occurs and one political party insists on enabling such abuse, the system is indeed broken.  Not only that, but there’s no will evident to fix it.  The GOP glories in it, feeling like it’s somehow winning the game as families and individuals suffer as a result of it.  In the past, it seems to me, there was a desire to repair what was an obvious problem.

Self-delusion, it seems, has become very common.  That, and some older politicians may not be aware how frequently they’re shown in their foibles on the internet.  Information that used to take weeks or months to filter out is now known instantaneously, and everybody’s overloaded and confused.  Politicians, instead of trying to show us the way in such a landscape are rather acting like my late stepfather in saying “Do as I say, not as I do.”  A fine bit of hypocrisy, that.  At least he tried to mend his ways, even if not successful in his efforts.  He would’ve known, however, that he had no business being president.  I reflect on this broken system quite a lot and I wonder what is next for us.  When trust in government is completely eroded, where do we turn?

Many have celebrated the decline of religion.  Let’s be more precise here and say organized religion.  Survey after survey reveals that we aren’t necessarily becoming less religious, but we’ve been watching prominent religious leaders throw their unstinting support behind a broken system.    Many of them continue to ignore the truth to support an incumbent who’s demonstrated that he’d just as soon turn on them as help their cause.  And for what?  Simply to prop up a tottering system, to squeeze out the last drops of what can be used to make things better for themselves before it all falls down.  As I was flying essentially coast to coast, it was evident from the air just how diverse a nation we are.  For nearly 250 years we’ve been able to make it work.  Now that it’s clearly broken, it seems the will to make it better has vanished.  And only politics remain.

Im Peaches and Whatnot

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Like most thinking people I’m wondering what’s wrong with our government.  If such wrong-doing were so out in the open any of the rest of us would be in jail, but because 45 stacks the courts the way GOPers want them, they think he’s God.  Using the Constitution for toilet paper, the Republican party believes itself above the law so it can, well, make up the law.  These are some angry, messed up people we’ve got in elected office.  I’ve seen some interviews with the key players, and it’s clear they literally—and I mean literally in the literal sense—think of politics as a game.  They don’t care how many lives get ruined; they just want to win.  They give the male gender a bad name.

This whole shambles reminds me of something I learned a few administrations ago—nobody really has the answers.  A low-functioning president is one thing (we’ve survived them before), but one who refuses to obey the law is quite another thing.  Subpoenas ignored, catastrophic foreign policy decisions made, and rallying since day one, we are being led by lawmakers who stand in contempt of the law.  All of this makes me think of deals with the Devil.  While I await the results of the peer review of Nightmares with the Bible, I recall what the outcome of diabolical deals always is.  It’s not true that “cheaters never prosper,” but it is new that it is being codified into law.  Hammurabi is rolling in his grave.  Even Caligula would be giving his forehead a palm smack.

America’s desire to become inbred has made us the spectacle for the world.  Growing up in the sixties the message of inclusivity was in the air.  I had no idea that those a generation older were resenting it, holding grudges, waiting quietly until they could throw inequality back into the mix and use it to stay in power even as they flouted the very law that was used to put them into office.  It’s no wonder that three biographies of Adolf Hitler have been published this year.  I guess there’s a fairly easy way to tell the difference between an average person and a politician.  The average person is fed up with this charade and ready for some actual leadership.  A politician, on the other hand, revels in the game he is playing, not concerning himself in the least with the consequences.

The New Purple

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Those of us who grew up Evangelical hold an unusual place among our liberal peers.  We’re often able to peer around, over, and under that wall that has been built between those who want a faith-based nation and those who want a free one.  Angela Denker is a fellow traveler on this road, and her book Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump is a useful roadmap.  Some of us fall further from the tree than others, but one of Evangelicalism’s more endearing traits, when taken seriously, is the love of those who are different from you.  That love is often forgotten in the political rhetoric daily whipped into a froth by an unstable president being used by his party to install agendas that hardly fit the moniker “Christian.”  That’s why books like this are so important.

I confess that reading studies such as this make me uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable because my Evangelical past haunts me worse than any ghost, but also because Denker is clearly right that basic humanity is being left in the garbage as battle lines are drawn up in what could be a great, diverse nation if a leader were determined to work for unity.  I recently wrote about lunar landings.  Kennedy was a Catholic who had to work to bring a nation together around a common goal.  Instead of tearing the country apart for his personal aggrandizement, he pointed to the moon.  Sure, there was a xenophobia concerning the Soviet Union, but at least in this pocket of the world there was a sense that we should work together.  When religion entered politics with Richard Nixon and his followers, a deep rift opened up.  The two topics you were never to discuss—religion and politics—were now in the same bed.

Red State Christians is an extended road trip on which Denker interviews people who largely fall under the Evangelical umbrella.  Some of them are Catholic.  Some of them are Hispanic.  Some of them are less concerned with social issues, but are hard-working laborers often overlooked by the Democratic Party.  The resulting pastiche is one in which Americans are cast not in sharp relief, but rather with the hazy edges that are a far more accurate way of understanding human beings.  Many, it becomes clear, elected Trump out of fear, or out of fear of his opponent.  These aren’t bad people, but they are people afraid.  This wasn’t an easy book to read, but it is an important one.  And those who want to work for a future that might include realms beyond the moon might find this work a small step in the right direction.

Bible Misunderstood

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Okay, so I wrote a post a couple days ago about evangelicals challenging Trump’s China tariffs because it will raise the price of Bibles.  Little did I know that Miriam Adelson wants a “Book of Trump” added to that very Bible.  Now, heroes are a personal business; to each their own.  Adding someone to the Bible, however, especially when that person has no idea of what Jesus said, is problematic.  Biblical and ecclesiastical scholars know that even if most Christians agreed books simply can’t be added to Scripture.  Many think the Gospel of Thomas should qualify—it may actually be closer to the words of Jesus than some of the canonical gospels and was putatively written by a disciple.  Thomas, however, will never make the cut.  Early bishops and elders in the church set pretty firm limits to the New Testament.  

Some religious traditions, such as Mormonism, have gotten around this impasse by writing entirely new sacred texts.  Loyal Trump followers might indeed fit the description of what used to be called a cult.  Thing is, George W., and George H. W., and even Ronald Reagan were more religious than the incumbent and nobody suggested adding them to the Good Book.  Our world has somehow flipped upside down in the last three years.  All I know is that in the photos of Trump with the most Jesus-like Pope in modern memory the Holy Father wasn’t smiling.  Then again, the Pontiff would likely not autograph Bibles if asked to do so.  Has anyone suggested a book of George Washington?  There’s such a thing as getting carried away.  

The Bible, apart from being the sole recognized authoritative text of the world’s largest organized religion, is an iconic text.  This means that the Bible is recognized as an important book—perhaps even a stand-in for God—without considering what it actually says.  This was a major point behind Holy Horror and it’s essential to understanding American political behavior.  Manipulating Scripture for political ends is generally the most cynical of approaches to the Good Book.  In America you can drive down highways and see the Bible advertised on billboards.  Large segments of an increasingly secular society are still motivated by it.  There was a time when it was believed that such cavalier suggestions as that of Ms. Adelson would constitute blasphemy, or would at least profane the founding book of Christianity.  In the minds of some Trump has clearly become a god.  So it was in Rome before the fall.

 

Let It Lie

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At the grave risk of over-simplifying, the list is brief: destructive scapegoating behavior, intolerance of criticism, concern with public image, and deviousness.  These characteristics, back in 1983 (note well the next year), were widely considered the description of evil.  Now look at the White House.  What do you see?  I know that I’m reading into the current situation, but how can one not?  I have never read anything by M. Scott Peck before.  Growing up I saw The Road Less Traveled on many, many bookshelves of friends and clergy.  I recently picked up Peck’s People of the Lie because, along with Malachi Martin’s Hostage to the Devil, it convinced many in my generation that demons actually exist.  At the time, still pretty much a Fundamentalist, I didn’t require any convincing.  Reading Peck’s People, however, in the era of Trump is a frightening thing.  And not just for the politics.

I always find books by psychologists and psychiatrists difficult to read.  I admit to having had a less-than-ideal childhood, and although self-healing is possible such books make me think I should spend my free time in therapy rather than writing.  In any case, People of the Lie is difficult in another respect as well—the labeling of evil.  Peck advocated for the scientific study of evil.  Good and evil, however, have generally been considered values rather than facts.  Science studies the latter while religion and philosophy deal with the former.  Not that lines in the sand are intended to be permanent.  Still, what one person calls evil may not be what others call evil.  Peck focuses primarily on narcissism and laziness as sources of evil.  He may very well be right, especially with the narcissism aspect, but some of the patients he described certainly didn’t seem evil to me.

Many aspects of this book could be discussed on a blog like this.  No doubt many of them will be, in sublimated form, in future posts.  Books, however, are part of the context in which they’re read.  In Peck’s day, the great political evil still fresh in many minds was the Vietnam War.  Today’s world, however, is one where Vietnam, Watergate, and even to a great extent the tragi-comedy of the W administration have all been eclipsed.  The cult of personality headed by one of the most obviously narcissistic individuals this nation has produced makes what Peck labeled “evil” seem perfectly normal.  And those who have the authority to do something about it either sit idly by, or worse, use it for their own means.  Roads less traveled indeed.

Fear of Religions

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There’s a narrative of fear in Christianity that seems to have been absent at the beginning.  This is evident when driving the highways of America where you’ll see billboards (which are meant for selling things) advertising the truth of a kind of biblical Fundamentalism.  On my recent trip across Pennsylvania this fear stood out in some rather obvious ways.  And it doesn’t reflect the Christianity reflected in the Good Book.  Stop and think about it: although the persecution of early believers was probably never as widespread as the usual narrative says it was, the writings we have describe facing persecution with joy.  Believing that they would be delivered, the oppressed welcomed the opportunity to prove their faith.  The Chick tracts I read as a child, however, focused intently on how scary the future persecution would be.  Fear, not joy, was the motivation for belief.

As we stopped in a turnpike rest area, we noticed a kiosk of Christian books amid snacks both salty and sweet.  The only other reading material available had to do with tourist attractions and finding directions.  It was, upon retrospect, odd.  Pondering this I recalled the narrative I heard repeatedly in my youth—a time was coming when it would be illegal to be Christian.  There would be persecution and the only proper response was a faith borne of fear.  This was not a religion of love thy neighbor.  No, this was a religion of armed survival based not on turning the other cheek, but on asserting itself with a show of firepower.  This kind of weaponized evangelicalism has taken over the narrative of Christianity.  Paul of Tarsus, knowing he would likely be executed, wrote of his joy from prison.  In the land of plenty we tremble.

The more cynical side of my experience suggests that politicians—who have learned that fear gets them elected—found in this form of Christianity a convenient set of sheep without a shepherd.  There’s fear in these billboards.  Fear that another religion may take over.  Or that secularism may make cherished beliefs illegal.  This isn’t cause for celebration, as the sermon on the mount proclaims it should be, but rather a call to arms.  In this country we have more than enough.  Among those left out, however, this fear grows just as rapidly as among those who fear they may lose the abundance they have.  They try to convert the weary traveler whose eye is drawn to the billboard.  And even those who stop for a drink of cold water which, the Bible suggests, should be freely given.

Revisiting Mesopotamia

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As a refresher on my own ancient history, I picked up Tammi J. Schneider’s An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion.  This was one of those books that spawned several internal conversations simultaneously as I realized just how much modern lenses color our perceptions of past societies.  Before commenting on that, however, a few necessary points must be made.  Our knowledge of Mesopotamia is in its infancy.  There are only a handful of universities around the world that have the resources to prepare young Assyriologists adequately.  Once prepared, those young folk will be introduced to the job market of those with far lesser education because there are practically no jobs in the field.  Seems a poor way to treat the civilization that invented wheels, arches, and beer.  Or so I’ve read.  In any case, many tablets in ancient languages have never been translated because there simply aren’t enough people to do it.  Any conclusions, therefore, must remain tentative.

Ancient religion in western Asia was extremely political.  From our perspective, this seems odd—although it’s happening again in real time.  Ancient societies relied on the cooperation of religious and political leaders and each institution helped the other.  They didn’t have the added complication of monotheism to deal with.  In trying to keep all the gods happy, they simply reasoned that if things fell apart, another god had grown to a superior position.  Certainly they believed the gods were there—we do too.  We call them cash, the stock exchange, and commodities, but we still worship and adore.  And they keep the government going.  (I kind of liked it better when they were old-fashioned gods; at least they had sympathy for the human condition.)

After getting to know the gods, Mesopotamians recognized that humans were to do the work for them.  Gods, after all, owned the land and priests and kings were powerful individuals.  You didn’t want to cross them.  Rituals were developed to ensure the smooth continuation of seasons and agriculture.  As Schneider points out, we don’t have enough information to understand all of this.  Our information comes from across millennia and from locations sometimes hundreds of miles apart.  If this is a puzzle well over half the pieces are missing.  We glimpse people like us, trying to survive.  Gods are unpredictable, but you can try to read a liver or two to find out what’s on their minds.  And some of the kings thought they were gods.  The more things change, the more, it seems, they stay the same.

When Like Rome

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Among the constant topics of discussion, both in the academy and in its publishing ancillaries, is the loss of interest in religion.  After a period of growth early in the new millennium, as measured by college majors, interest has dropped off and Nones are set to replace evangelical Christians as the largest religious group in America.  The corresponding lack of interest in religion is extremely dangerous.  I’ve often posted on the necessity of looking back to see where we might be going, and the further back we go the more we understand how essential religion is to the human psyche.  My own academic goals were to get back to the origins of religion itself—something I continue to try to do—and I discovered that they rest in the bosom of fear.  I’m not the first to notice that, nor have others been shy about using it to their advantage.

Lack of classical education, by which I mean reading the classics, has led us to an extremely tenuous place.  More interested in the Bible, I followed the track to another ancient system of thought, but as I find out more about the religion of classical Greece and Rome, the more I tremble.  You see, ancient Roman writers (especially) were extremely conscious of the fact that fear motivated people.  In order to construct a steady state, they infused it with a religion based on fear and supported by said state.  An overly simplified view would suggest that the Jews and Christians took their religion too seriously and refused to play the Roman game.  When they wouldn’t worship the emperor (who surely knew he wasn’t a god) they threatened the empire.  The response?  A good, old-fashioned dose of fear.  Crucifixion oughta cure ‘em.

See what I mean?

The thing is, our American form of government, buoyed up by an intentional courting of evangelical Christians as a voting bloc, manipulates that fear even more stealthily than the Romans did.  People ask me why I “like” horror.  I don’t so much like it as I see its role as a key.  It is a key to understanding religion and it has long turned the tumblers of the state.  Ancient societies kept religion under state control—something the Republican Party has been advocating as of late.  Why?  Religion, based on fear, ensures the continuance of power.  Those of us who watch horror are doing more than indulging in a lowbrow pastime.  We are probing the very origins of religion.  And we are bringing to light the machinations with deus.  Let those who read understand.

Paying Troll

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There was a time, should the media of my youth be believed, when a man insulted another man’s wife at his peril.  A barroom fight, or perhaps a sober brawl, would ensue.  Such chivalrous days are likely over and the internet makes nasty comments so easy to disseminate (how terribly masculine!) for all the world to see.  Hiding behind assumed names, avatars, or delusional fictions, you can feel like a big man by saying unkind things to a person you’ll never meet.  Such is the world of Trump’s America.  Although he may think himself divine, Trump didn’t invent Twitter or the internet.  Neither did Al Gore.  Still, the distasteful political rancor leading up to the midterm elections led to a man (I presume) trolling my wife behind a mask of Facebook anonymity.

It’s hard to tell how to react.  Feminism doesn’t always want a man to step in and defend, but we’re all raised with tales of princesses and those who honor them.  Having been raised by a woman with an absentee husband, I have nothing but admiration for strong women.  Although categorized as a “white man,” I can’t see my own brand as better than any other.  We are all human beings, and with some rare exceptions, we deserve respect.  Like all evolved creatures, however, I sometimes reach deeply back into my primate roots and the tropes of my childhood begin to simmer.  Who trolls another man’s wife over politics?  Who doesn’t stop to consider that every woman is a daughter and many are mothers and sisters?  If you want to pick on someone, well, you know how the saying goes.

The midterm elections brought some much-needed balance to a government way off kilter.  There are still trolls under the bridges, however.  The storybooks tell how knights vanquish trolls and even the liberated male can’t help but imagine himself on that proud steed.  What kind of man takes a keyboarded cheap-shot at another man’s wife?  The quality of his discourse speaks volumes.  Those on the left believe in equality and can’t respond in kind.  It is, ironically, a far more biblical response than trolling on the right.

I’ve lost readers of this blog due to politics.  Some of my former readers have even told me so.  I appreciate their candor.  We can’t all agree, I know.  What we can do, however, is be civil.  Those who put themselves in elected office know that they are opening themselves to criticism.  It is very hard to slander a United States president, in the words of the Good Book, “how the mighty are fallen.”  Those with thin skin should think twice (or even once) before running for the most criticized office in the world.  Most, until now, knew that what they said would set the tone for the nation.  We’re all entitled to an opinion, and, for the time being, are free to express it.  Still, I’d think twice before insulting another man’s wife.  But then, I’ve always been a hopeless idealist.