Misinterpretations, Idolatry, and Anti-Manichaeism in O’Connor’s Fiction

When I first read Flannery O’Connor, I thought she was lampooning Southern idiocy, the kind of evangelical buffoonery and racism that’s become a cheap joke. Then I read Mystery & Manners, and thought she was a Christian nut job mashing together the Old Testament God with the New Testament Christ to give her characters and readers some much needed tough love. I believed this lessened the importance and impact of her fiction.

            Oh, how wrong I was.

            Upon further investigation, I realize the problem was my agnosticism as a modern reader. I’d misinterpreted her work at every level. It wasn’t just the generation gap between O’Connor’s redemptive themes and our own cultural mores, but the complex structure of her fiction. And I was no doubt influenced by my flirtation with the New Atheists. Remember, New Atheists: religion = bad. Boogey-boogey-boogey.

Anyway, O’Connor’s use of imagery, vocabulary, and symbols that contain negative cultural connotations only enables further misinterpretation. She cleverly employs this technique, and therefore her true intentions may go unnoticed since her salvational concerns for her characters must find harsh conflict in the worlds they inhabit, ones that lack the Christian values of love, hope, and charity. Of course, this is O’Connor’s theological concern—the world of her characters is our own (har-har).

            In “Revelation”, for example, from her second collection Everything That Rises Must Converge, Ruby Turpin’s excessive judgments in the doctor’s office about Mary Grace seem to suggest Turpin’s fervent Christianity is the cause of this pervasive “othering.” O’Connor’s biting prose reads as if Grace is justified when she tells Turpin, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” This makes sense as modern audiences tend to see Christians as rabidly judgmental, more concerned with our salvation than their own sins. Of course, this is the modern media stereotype. Westboro Baptist Church = all Christians. You get the idea.

Yet, in Turpin O’Connor examines the horror of human complacency. Turpin is so satisfied in her own beliefs she’s blind to her lack of character and in turn, of true Christian understanding. In the end, standing amongst her hogs, raging at God before the setting sun in a very Job-like scene, Turpin realizes her pettiness. The ignorance that follows complacency has almost ruined her life. Only by defeating her pride and her desire to possess “all the answers” without participating in the continual wheel of confusion/wisdom, does she find redemption.

I guess you’d call it God’s grace.

Many have called O’Connor’s work “good Catholic fiction,” a charge that at first seems ludicrous. Stories about murderers, pedophiles, and mouthy, fat Southern ladies? Really?!

Well, what’s considered good Catholic fiction by the Vatican isn’t necessarily considered such by O’Connor. After all, she often said the Church needs reform. This raises the question, “What is a good Catholic?”

First, let’s understand O’Connor’s vile characters are actually “prophets” in her work. A prophet in literature doesn’t have to stroll into town proclaiming the Good Word. No, he or she only has to proclaim O’Connor’s gospel. Catholic guilt aside, the importance of being Catholic, and thus a “good Catholic,” is to realize you will never have all the answers. In this way, you are imperfect (the Church and Pope’s infallibility is whole other can o’ worms). You’re human, and must recognize this in its totality. You are not a god, but a small cog in a vast, complex machine.

Why would you think you have all the answers?

Well, pride, and fear.

This sweet face writes about murderers.

            For O’Connor, any ideology that blinds one to the realities of the world is pagan worship. In thinking one is always right, one can’t see how often one is wrong. By worshipping one’s ideology, one is worshiping oneself, and putting his or her worth before God’s.

This often results in violent, disturbing, or blackly comic climaxes in O’Connor’s fiction. These “negative” denouements are essential—they’re a form of iconoclasm, the breaking of the individual’s psychological and spiritual idols. To understand this further, you must realize O’Connor’s favoritism of St. Thomas Aquinas’ critique of Manichaeism.

Manichaeism, developed in the third century, took God’s second commandment to heart: it deplored graven images. God is neither a man nor a physical being, and cannot be artistically depicted. St. Thomas Aquinas viciously opposed Manichaeism. While he agreed God is a spirit, and to worship images is sinful, he thought that just because someone renders an image of God doesn’t mean that person believes the image contains God. To Aquinas, Manichaeism concerned itself too much with materiality and failed to see the glory of the Divine picture, human dignity, and love. 

For O’Connor, “Parker’s Back” illustrates this. Parker, in an attempt to win the favor of his wife, Sarah, gets a Byzantine tattoo of Jesus Christ on his back. Although he acts as if he could care less about the fanatically religious Sarah, he actually wants her to see him as her lover, husband, and friend. He knows the tattoo is just a tattoo. Yet, when he shows it to Sarah, she condemns it. “He don’t look,” she says. “He’s a spirit. No man shall see his face.” Not only is Sarah’s conception of God problematic (if He is a spirit, how does he have a face?), she’s blinded by pride. Like Ruby Tuprin, she only sees the world through her disapproval of others. She cannot understand the difference between a picture of God and the Divine Mystery, of which she is part, and therefore cannot truly see her husband, understand his love, or even herself.

Much if not all of O’Connor’s work can be seen as a battle between self-idolatry and true spiritual insight. Modern readers may misunderstand her purpose because of their inability to separate her intentions from her religious affiliation. She has no traditional “Catholic agenda” or ideological mission. By creating characters so convinced their doctrine is infallible, you’d think O’Connor is saying that their dogma is anything but. However, her point is that the human mind and all the wrathful deities within is where real fallibility lies. This type of stubbornness (ie, the fear of realizing this fallibility) must be broken. She smashes it with truth and irony.

Or if you’d like, God’s grace.

I’m Sorry I’m Alive: Part IV – Don’t Want to Hear Your Ancient History

Christianity is the only modern religion to have a doctrine like Original Sin, with a primitive ancestor being the cause of human nature. In other religions, such as Judaism and Buddhism, the world is the twister, a broken place wherein humanity must do their best with their free will. In Judaism, free will should be exercised as one of God’s chosen people to benefit all mankind, while in Buddhism it is used to ease the suffering of all living beings. Christianity adds other rules to the playing field. Free will should be exercised to benefit all beings. However, this will be problematic because of man’s sinful nature. Yet, this should not hinder man, for if it does, man will not reap the benefits of God’s kingdom, the reward of the afterlife. All of these religions attempt to explain suffering. What is relatively unknown, and not taught in today’s churches, is how Christianity developed the concept of Original Sin. It is not rooted in the Old Testament. You’ll find it nowhere in the Adam and Eve story. Instead, the Fall of Man originates in a difference of philosophical opinion between ancient Christianity and Gnosticism.

            Gnosticism is a complicated, mostly because its ancient texts and practices were destroyed or hidden after Christianity’s established dominance. Here’s the short version—a Creator God made the world, while lesser gods conceived its operation. Because of this creation by committee, the world is a broken, evil place, filled with suffering and death. Man, whose soul is divine, moves through it of his own will, yet sometimes this broken world causes him to act evil. His hand is forced. Early Christian clergy had problems with this philosophy. First, it did not recognize Jesus Christ as man’s redeemer. Second, it let man off the hook for his own reprehensible actions. Bishop of Lyon Irenaeus, part of the Roman Gaul clergy, developed Original Sin as a method to counter these Gnostic beliefs. In Irenaeus’ view, Adam should be held at fault. Notice how this does not condemn Eve, as later church doctrine would. Because of Adam’s original sin, and since mankind is born through Adam’s seed, all of us have propensity to sin. Because we battle temptation, and often cannot overcome it, we are slaves to our weak, sinful natures.

            This view was countered by Christian apologists, who maintained that with free will no one is enslaved to sin. They have choice. Even if one lives a righteous, sinless life, one does not enter the afterlife with one strike, original sin, already against them.

            In the fourth century, Augustine of Hippo made original sin more depraved. He added that since Adam is present in all mankind, mankind was present during the Fall of Man. Thus, we all inherit Adam’s guilt for having defied God. Augustine also surmised that sex is the vessel which passes original sin. The more children you have, the more you are making little sinners. Mankind’s will then becomes weakened, but not destroyed, and mankind itself becomes a sort of wayward crowd who never sees the path to heaven. Of interest is the Mormon Church’s view of this. It recognizes the inherit contradiction in telling your creations to be fruitful and multiply, while thinking that such an action is in itself sinful.

            Original sin’s philosophy was batted about for centuries within Christianity. In Catholicism, baptism washed it away. Children who died before baptism went to purgatory, a heinous lie which only now the Church admits to inventing. Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin were more extreme. You could not “wash away” original sin. You were condemned to it throughout life and thus should feel a strong sense of guilt for your own nature, as if somehow that accounted for all the worldly atrocities that came before you. Old world orthodox countered the Protestant idea. It says no one inherits guilt from anyone. Mankind only inherited a fallen nature, not guilt or damnation.

            All of these ideas merely try to explain suffering and answer the question, “Why does mankind act the way it does?” It is a good question. It is an important question. The problem, as I’ve said, is basing it in Adam and Eve, who by their very definition, did not know the divine rules they were breaking on the scale which God judges them. It’d be like kicking your three-year old out of the house because it took a dollar from your wallet. If you have not explained stealing, money, or respecting another’s property, how can you expect the punishment to suffice or even stop the behavior? Original Sin is an abhorrent doctrine that uses to a time that did not exist to explain an action that did not exist to explain a world that does exist. 

To use Adam and Eve as metaphor is fine, if done correctly, but it is a crime when done to make people, especially children, feel as if they are broken, sinful vessels without the power to change the fundamental core of their natures. Such ancient thought, and ancient history, has no place in the modern world, but only as a teaching tool to show how far man has come in its ideas in the last two-thousand years.            

I’m Sorry I’m Alive: Part III – That Fruit Tastes Like Burning

Original Sin is one of mankind’s first, and therefore one of its most problematic, attempts at tackling why humans act as they do. Within Original Sin’s doctrine, prostrations must be made. We need some good medicine, damn it, to fix ourselves. There is, however, an explanation for our “sinfulness” that sheds supernatural, backtracking gobbledygook: human nature. It hasn’t changed and won’t anytime soon. We can, however, debunk and demystify the outrageous primeval claims that our nature grows from snacking forbidden fruit. The problem with Original Sin is that it uses the illogic of the Adam and Eve story as its framework and foundation.

            My previous posts have already established that the OT’s God, though he does a hell of a job moving over the face of the waters, isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. When Adam asks for a companion, God gives him animals. This sets up the first dilemma of God’s character: either he is not omniscient, for if he was he would surely have known what Adam wanted, or is stupid. Or perhaps he just has an off-beat sense of humor. That is possible. After all, this is the same God who punishes the talking snake by cursing it to slither on its belly for all time.

            Another dilemma presents itself: could Adam have known he wanted a woman? He doesn’t ask for one, although that is implied, only a companion. And why would he need a companion? If everything is blissful in the Garden, why does he feel lonely? Is his “sinful” nature imbedded the moment he was made from clay? These are the kinds of questions that point to Genesis trying to explain ancient societal norms after the fact. But, I’ll continue…

            So, God, who can move anywhere, see everything, know all thoughts, and smite anyone he sees fit, is absent when the talking snake “tempts” Eve? This suggests the snake is equal in power to God, if God cannot read its thoughts or know its whereabouts. Well, God was busy tending to…what could he be tending to, the creation of the Himalayas? He’s God. He can multitask. You want mountains? Snap, there they are, made while he was just talking to you about foreskins. If you want to take a more nefarious route, perhaps God wants Eve to listen to the talking snake, and why not? With Adam and Eve out of the Garden, God won’t have to clean up after them or put up with their loud music.

            With God’s dubious character established, another important point is the psychological and physiological levels of Adam and Eve’s development. Since they live a child-like existence in the Garden, are they children? If not, then they at least have child-like minds as they do not grasp the concept of death. Well, God had to tell them about it. Really, when was he going to get around to that, especially since their eventual knowledge of death gets them kicked out of the Garden? And when God banishes them, where are they going to go? Isn’t the whole world the Garden of Eden at this point? Does God turn everything but this hot spot between the Tigris and Euphrates into the harsh, kill-or-be-killed animal kingdom?

Here is the most troubling point of the Adam and Eve story: why does God banish them from Eden when they had no conception of right and wrong on the scale which God ultimately judges them? I mean, they don’t know any better because God won’t allow them to know better. He hinders their growth and maturity. So, when they eat the fruit, realize the truths hidden from them and want answers, God curses them and kicks them out? What a way to raise your children.

            The Adam and Eve story presents us with a terrifying situation: a reactionary God who not only gets lost in his own Garden while we succumb to “evil,” but one who does not raise his children with love, but selfishly disciples them. This cannot function as a moral foundation as an all-knowing, all-loving God willfully and arrogantly breaks his own code again and again for petty, superficial, and ultimately selfish reasons.

            My previous post provides a kinder interpretation of the story, though I realize its fallacies. Ancient religious authorities intended Adam and Eve as fact. The story was meant to control a desert people and provide them with a basis of understanding why they act the way they do. My interpretation hopes other teaching avenues are possible. Namely, that we abolish the doctrine of Original Sin, and instead use the Adam and Eve story to teach us about life, not death. For that is exactly what Original Sin depends upon when it cites Adam and Eve: the death our innocence for a crime committed in our ancient past, one for which we must always atone, since it factors into our heavenly judgment upon our leaving this mortal coil.

            While my interpretation has its problems, don’t cast out the Bible from your life. Yes, it has no place in politics or education, and to use it as statements of irrefutable fact to control people is wrong. It has inconsistencies and immoralities. And it should. It is ancient literature, history, and social commentary all wrapped up in one. To cast it out would be to commit the same folly God does with Adam and Eve—you’ll miss out on the learning experience.

            In Part IV, my final post on Original Sin, I’ll examine the doctrine’s establishment, its historical and theological uses, and where it should take us from here. 

I’m Sorry I’m Alive: Part II – What To Make of Adam and Eve

If I offended anyone in Part I, I apologize. I made light of the Adam and Eve story not to prove its inconsistencies and stretches of credibility, but to ease its historical significance and theological severity. In doing so, we see what does not make sense. I don’t always dismiss the fantastical. Like Fox Mulder, “At first, I’ll believe pretty much anything.” What I cannot believe, however, is that the Adam and Eve story is the literal truth and that this literal truth has any bearing on us today.

            First, we must question the story by placing Adam and Eve in the natural world. The literalist defense would be: how can you question God’s ways? Easy, do it. How else can we achieve new understandings? When we talk of Original Sin, we’re not talking of the ways of God anyway, but of man.

By applying natural logistics to Adam and Eve, we hit the biggest obstacles. Of course, two people magically set in the natural world thousands of years ago could not populate said world. Never mind the mathematical improbability, and the unlikelihood of survival from predators, climate, and starvation. Never mind the Creationist claims that the world held no mortal peril before the Fall (and that we played with dinosaurs). Look at it from a historical and genetic point of view. Our species originated in Africa, not between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The OT’s desert farmers lived in that region for thousands of years. Sure, they traveled, but in the primitive mindset, like that of a child’s, the universe must revolve around their peoples and so mankind must originate from their land. How else to breed the fear of others and want of violence toward them if you don’t “other” them from the very beginning?

Okay then, genetics: as we’ve seen with Egyptian, French and English royalties, genetic diseases and abnormalities occur and progressively worsen over time with long-term incest. Adam and Eve’s ancestors would have had to experience these same abnormalities, as would Noah’s family after the Flood. Well, God didn’t make diseases while tending to the Garden. Okay, but he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden to endure the toils of the world and then made genetic disease? Isn’t that more effort than is needed?

If Adam and Eve didn’t actually happen and all of it is merely a story, then what do we make of that story? Don’t, as I stress so often, dismiss it as bullshit. Look at it as literature:

Simply put, Adam and Eve is a story of aging. God represents parents, childhood, once-held beliefs. While he may be a creator, he is not Creator. He is the environment in which a person is born and bred. Adam and Eve are really one character, sexless, belonging to any demographic or ethnicity. They are a symbol for individual duality, Adam the satisfied part of human nature, loyal, content in his beliefs and knowledge. Eve is the part that reaches out for new understandings, is rebellious, skeptical. This is not because she is a woman, as religious authorities have preached. Without Eve’s thirst for knowledge and maturity, mankind as we know it, if you follow the story, would not exist. She is the dramatic thrust of the story, the dynamic character. It is not her “sinful nature” that gets mankind in trouble, but our desire to know that sometimes gets us into hot water with our families and social environment. How to prove this within the text? Like with religious dogma, it comes down to the talking snake.

The Tree of Knowledge represents maturity and doubt that comes with newfound intelligence, the harbinger of which is the serpent. When Genesis was written, snakes were not symbols of evil. They were symbols of wisdom and fertility. So, the talking snake is not Satan. That line of bull was devised centuries later by church authorities. The snake is Wisdom, fertilizing Eve’s desire to know, and pushing her to eat the fruit. By eating the fruit, Adam and Eve experience what most of us do when we realize the world is bigger than our parents’ backyard: our minds open. We question our environment (Eden) and God (Mom and Dad).

Mom and Dad don’t like being questioned, as it raises doubts within themselves (like how could God not know the serpent was there if he is omniscient?). They expel us from a paradise that, in our young lives, has soured. Yet, were we to return with love and respect, we would be gladly taken back into the fold. Look at God’s command to the cherub: in returning, Adam and Eve will no longer be who they once were. Age, knowledge, life struggles, etc., will change them into “other” people. If anything, the Adam and Eve story promotes, though God’s acceptance, the ever-changing nature of human beings as a natural, or even essential occurrence, not a source for guilt or atonement.

Though this interpretation is simple, it captures the crux of the story as I see it. Some of us, after reaching a certain age, shun how we were raised or what we were raised to believe, in favor of what we now see as a quest for truth. Some of us decide, in old age, to take solace in what we once held dear for an easement of doubt and the assurance of personal comfort. Again, this doesn’t apply to everybody, but what remains relevant is the consistency of human nature, our rebellion, expulsion, and return throughout time, within our own families and among friends.

Original Sin is an evil method of control by the church. In being made to believe we are intrinsically evil, we are sent into the world with a millstone already around our necks. Although the original writers of Genesis were trying to formulate explanations for the miracle of life, their intentions have been twisted by the doctrine of Original Sin.

In Part III, I’ll deconstruct Adam and Eve as a basis for this philosophy.  

I’m Sorry I’m Alive: Part I – In The Beginning

Guilt is a great thing. If used on your parents with tears and a convincing pout, it can get you birthday presents of which you’d only dreamed. If wielded properly when raising children, guilt can assure you never spend a moment alone when you turn old and senile. And if you can incorporate guilt with sex, you’ll never masturbate again. Guilt is a powerful tool, and speaking of power, I must give props to the originator and ultimate master of guilt: God.

            You see, apparently the Big Daddy in the Sky created everything in the universe with Earth as his crowning achievement. When He got bored of banishing the dark with light and killing dinosaurs, He created man in His image. Apparently, God didn’t recall that man, like other creatures He made, such as livestock, fish, and birds, must reproduce, and to do so need an opposing sex. Omniscience can be a pain in the neck, bro.

            The first man, Adam, hung out in the Garden of Eden and he, too, like his Creator got bored. “Hey, God, this garden’s beautiful, I love the azaleas, but it’s kind of lonely,” said Adam. He wiggled his eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”

“Of course I do,” God said. “I can read your thoughts, damn it!”

And so God made—animals?

Wait, he made animals first, right? Well, it depends on which creation story you read in Genesis. In the first, God makes animals before man. In the second…well, you’ll see…

Adam looked in amazement at the wildlife God created. “This is great,” he exclaimed. “I was tired of being a vegetarian.” But soon, “boredom” reared its ugly head. “Hey, God?”

“Yes, Adam?”

“Look, what you made was great. The tigers, love the colors. The shark I’m not too crazy about, but I get along with the apes.”

“Good.”

“But when I said I was lonely, I kind of meant, you know…”

God smacked His forehead. “Of course!”

So, God, that magical fashioner, took a rib from Adam to make him a wife, Eve, without using anesthetic (Adam was a trooper). Adam and Eve wandered the garden hand-in-hand, naked as jaybirds (except when they put leaves over their genitals and pinned them to some vines to make themselves a chic nature thong). It was a good, child-like, peaceful existence.

Until one day...

            A magnificent tree towered in the Garden, baring the tastiest fruit. God said to Adam and Eve, “Don’t eat the fruit. I need it for my smoothies.” In fact, the tree was The Tree of Knowledge (or the Tree of Life, depending on the ‘eyewitness’ or the translation) and only God had the property rights.

Adam and Eve replied, “We won’t touch it, sir.”

But a crafty serpent, an evil bastard, found its way into the garden and whispered to Eve, “Hey, Eve, Adam’s taking care of business in the bushes, right? So why don’t you have a little bite of this fruit? I had some. It’s great for your skin.”

Eve, who never tanned, only burned, ate the fruit. The serpent promised her that in eating it, she could be like God and escape death. Eve, who until now did not know the concept of death, exclaimed, “Why wasn’t I told about it?!” She rushed to Adam and explained all she knew. He couldn’t comprehend. She told him he would understand if he ate the fruit, too.

Adam took a big bite, looked down, and realized everybody could see what was flapping between his legs. He felt embarrassed. Eve saw her breasts, and what had to be at this point in history a gigantic bush.

They rushed around the Garden, making better genital coverings, when God found them. He had been elsewhere in the Garden, unaware the serpent had entered, forgetful that He could kick it out whenever He pleased. Again, omniscience can be a drag.

God was pissed. Adam, Eve, and the serpent pointed fingers at one another (alright, maybe not the serpent, but he can talk, okay?). God counted to three. On three, all of them kept quiet. God glared at the serpent and said, “I curse you to slither on your belly all your days!”

The serpent cocked his brow. “Isn’t that what I already—? Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I’ll just slither away now. See you later.” He glanced at Adam and Eve. “Sorry, guys, must be going. It’s a snake’s life, you know. I’ll just be slithering…” And with that he disappeared into the bushes.

God pointed to Adam and Eve. “Get out of this garden, ingrates! I turn my back once and you disobey me?!”

Eve spoke right up. “What’s this about death, then? You never mentioned it.”

God looked about and replied, “Never mind that now! Adam, for your punishment, you’ll work hard and sweat your whole life away because you’re the man!”

Adam hung his head and muttered, “Yeah, thanks for that.”

God pointed at Eve and said, “And you shall have pain in childbirth!”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Typical man.”

God threw open the Gates of Eden, kicked Adam and Eve into the world, and locked down the Tree of Knowledge (or Life). He set a cherub at its gates and told the cherub, “Don’t let any creation of mine come in here again unless he holds out his hand and accepts the fruit as coming from Me. Only then will he live forever.”

“What about women?” the cherub asked.

“Huh?”

“You said, ‘he.’ What if a woman shows up? Is this a Men’s Club?”

God thought it over. “For now,” He replied.

Since this Fall of Man, every one of us has Original Sin on our souls. You should feel horrible. You should kneel and pray for God’s forgiveness. You should feel guilty for the promise Adam and Eve broke thousands of years before you. The pain your mother experienced at your birth serves as a reminder of your hereditary treachery.

Right?

Stay tuned for Part II…

Inspirational Words From The Buddha

A short post today, but nevertheless an important one.


Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis,
when you find that anything agrees with reason
and is conducive to the good
and benefits one and all,
then accept it and live up to it.


Gautama Buddha

Genesis – She Begat Him, He Begat Her, They All Begat Together

Some interesting findings in the creation story of Genesis:

1) God creates the Earth, until then an unformed void on “the surface of the deep,” and his spirit “hovers over the face of the waters.” The language of Genesis’ opening verses is beautiful. Its creation imagery would make striking computer animation. Notice God’s character; at this point of the text only a spirit creating by speech. Language, in plot and context, is the driving force of creation (see my essay in Luna Negra’s Spring 2009 issue).

2) In separating darkness from light, an image suggesting a great flash, one may think this supports the Big Bang theory. Robin Williams in his Live on Broadway stand-up routine asks, “Couldn’t this be a metaphor for the Big Bang?” Then, in a hillbilly voice, while miming flicking a light switch, answers, “No, God just went click.” At first reading, the order of creation appears to mimic scientific findings. Yet, upon closer inspection, Genesis reinforces an Earth-centered universe: God creates the Earth (which already has water), light, sky, land, vegetation, and then the Sun, Moon, and stars.

3) God as “He, Father,” etc. In English, the pronoun is “he.” The Hebrew pronoun, however, is sexless. Here we see how original languages suffer mistranslations and how the original text becomes skewed with patriarchal dogma. Yet, that still leaves us with the problem of such words as “Father.” Well, in the time of the Pentateuch’s composition, the man/woman duality was balanced in worship. Archeologists have found evidence that women were venerated in ancient Judaism since they bore life. The ancient view was God, the spirit of creation, was the father, and Earth, the fertile womb of life, the mother, and both were worshipped since one cannot exist with the other (hints of ying and yang). The ancients might have had more balanced gender roles than we believed, with the universe and mankind needing both the sperm (God) and the egg (Earth) for life to continue. That is, however, until men took over religious authority and treated women’s bodies as sinful since they “tempted” men, the logic of which escapes me since that suggests men are the weaker sex being that their wills cannot resist temptation.

4) “Man created in God’s image.” God as a human being? Again, not so, as the Hebrew intent was not to describe God’s physicality, but his nature. By man being created in God’s image and likeness, man has the emotions of God. He has the ability to create. Of note, is God’s speech as he creates man: “in our image, in our likeness.” Who is “our?” Realize God does not say “my.” This suggests more than one spiritual interest in man’s creation. Ancients believed the heavens were filled with incorporeal beings, a sort of mystical football team with infinite numbers, possessing infinite powers. I suggest a modern interpretation: God could be the universe itself, “our” the matter of our bodies—protons, neutrons, etc.—the stardust through which we began.

Fundamentalists preach Genesis’ first chapters as literal truth. They claim the world is 6,000 years old, that we walked with dinosaurs. They want to deny science, ignore history. More importantly, they want to be right. Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens tell us to dismiss Genesis as child’s play (although in his writings Hitchens says religious texts should be venerated as crucial steps in mankind’s artistic development and should not be forgotten). They want to be right, too. Each side misses a key facet: human nature. We will always question our purpose on Earth. For good or bad, we always want meaning. Eradicating this desire would extinguish a hefty part of man’s spirit for discovery, especially for the layman.

I propose we land somewhere in the middle. Appreciate Genesis as a story, one of the great imaginative leaps in human history. Don’t deny its authors credit for attempting to answer the ultimate mystery: “How did we get here and why?” Appreciate its beautiful language, history, and its attempts at ratifying a cohesive philosophy for ancient desert farmers. Realize it is a stepping stone that led us to today’s discoveries. Don’t believe it literally, but if you must, don’t lord it over those who wish to believe different than you. Most of all, however, for those of us who don’t “believe” as we should, do not dismiss Genesis’ artistic qualities because of its political, social, and scientific, misapplications. There is too much history to miss out on.

The Documentary Hypothesis is Crap—Wait, Maybe It’s Just Your Logic

While preparing my previous post, I found this Christian apologist website “refuting” the documentary hypothesis: http://carm.org/answering-documentary-hypothesis. Now, I know I’m picking on one of those Christian groups that misrepresent the faith, but unfortunately these groups are what are heard today. They shed a bad light on Christianity and its followers which sours public and media opinion. I wish moderate to liberal Christians would decry sects like this.

I’ll attempt to destroy their logic:

1) “The Bible says in Rom. 1:18-21 that men suppress the truth of God's word in their unrighteousness. This is what is happening here. They are suppressing the truth. They are devising elaborate methods to deny the inspiration and authenticity of the Bible, particularly the Pentateuch.”

This is the pot calling the kettle black. The people behind the documentary hypothesis are not atheists or agnostics out to disprove God’s existence, although I’m sure some are. No, the team is composed of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, i.e. a cross-cultural, cross-theological team whose goal is not iconoclastic, but to search for better understandings.

The above quote is also a blatant twisting of scripture. This New Testament passage abhors men denying the truth within themselves and the natural world, “that which God has revealed to them” and is “already evident.” Nowhere does it mention scripture. And since when is pursuing wisdom against God’s interests? Always, you say? No, it’s just against dogmatic interests. Without their dogma and rhetoric, they lose means of control—power and fear.

2) “The Pentateuch was written centuries ago in a different language, in a different culture, and a different land. The critics are claiming that "they are able to decide exactly what a writer could or could not say, and on this basis to determine what part of the document belongs or does not belong to him."1 In other words, the critics are basing their argument on their own ability to read a document that is 3000 years old, divide it up into word usage groups, and assert hidden divisions and separate authors. And not only this, but they are claiming they can do it on a consistent basis. This is hardly an exact science, and is open to a wide range of error, depending upon the presuppositions and purposes of the critic.”

There are two valid points here, one being the margin for error, and second for it hardly being an exact science. Yet, how many of these Christian apologists have devoted their entire lives to studying these ancient manuscripts? Better yet, how many of them can get their hands on the manuscripts? Even better, how many of them would want to get their hands on the manuscripts for either suppressing truth or running in fear from their shaken beliefs? Look, I know many apologists study the Bible, but the ones being heard are not Biblical scholars. They have English translations, so many times removed from their original languages and intent that their motives are clouded by what they have not and choose not to see. Go ahead, dismiss the scholars who’ve spent years educating themselves, researching, and deciphering these texts. Just don’t depend on your mechanic to know what may be wrong with your brakes due to a margin of error.

3) “What writer writes with a consistent style? Yes, there are styles to writers, but the subject matter affects the content. A technical work is different from a narrative or historical piece. The Pentateuch has components of all of these. Therefore, different styles are expected. Additionally, what the writer has in mind can easily cause him to use a different concentration of words. Should the intention change, so would the word usage. Did Moses sit down at one sitting and write everything out? Of course not. Upon reflection, reading, prayer, etc., his focus and purpose within sections of Scripture can change as he moves to a new subject.”

This is the most illogical to me. Writers have different styles, but you can tell a Roth from a McCarthy to a Faulkner, even when they change content. Subject matter does affect content—but the documentary hypothesis looks at language, vocabulary, and content. The old English word for “whitewash” is much different than in ancient Greek (if they had such a word). That’s what scholars find. Did Moses sit down and write it in one night? Of course not—because he didn’t write it! If he did and chose his work as the definite account to sway unbelievers into the faith, why contradict the creation account within the first few chapters? It takes a hell of a writer to keep writing after one dies—apparently Moses does such a thing in Deuteronomy.

4) “WordPerfect has a Grammar Analyzer for readability. I ran both the paper explaining the Documentary Hypothesis and this paper refuting it through the analyzer. The results are interesting. We could conclude that though there are similarities, there must be two authors due to definite differences. After all, the first paper has both more complex sentences and more verb complexity than the second as well as being 13th-grade level. The funny thing is, I wrote this in two sittings: One before church and the other after church on the same day.”

Because a WordPerfect analyzer is exactly what the documentary hypothesis does. Oh, and doing it in English is just what I expected you to do, crazy Christian. Don’t set up the actual variables of the experiment. Keep them as narrow as you can to prove your point. While I see what he is going for, he is pounding his head on a tree without realizing he stands in a forest.

5) “Whether or not a biblical critic wants to take Jesus' word for anything is up to the individual. But no less a person than Jesus authenticated the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.”

This is a good one, considering Jesus was a Jew taught Jewish scripture interpretation by Jewish authorities in his Jewish youth in his Jewish nation state. Of course, Jesus had access to biblical scholarship because they had the internet, easy world travel, ability to understand complex notions of language, etc. This line of logic is similar to: “I worship the long-dead King of Spain. He said the world was flat. That’s all the proof you need no matter what science, space travel, or your elementary school education tells you.” Again, here is the problem with loudmouth Christian sects today: they ignore Jesus’ history, probable childhood and rearing, and socio-economic position in the Roman state in favor of pushing their rhetoric down your throats.

If Jesus could read this website today, I’m sure he’d smack his forehead and go, “Oy vay.” Well, maybe he’d do that after he got over his shock of our technology, such witchcraft and wizardry that could only be fashioned by demons.

The Old Testament – Jesus, This Thing is Huge!

LOL

The Bible has most influenced our Western world by its fundamentalist applications, the reasoning of which is odd given it’s an ancient Middle Eastern text with no knowledge of a round Earth, North or South Americas, established Christian theology, etc., e.g. everything that would come to be Westernized. My purpose of exploring these religious texts is to focus on their origins to discover their true intent and not to beat the dead horse of church atrocities and misfires over the centuries. Good or bad, the Bible has shaped Western culture and thought, and its language still resonates in our writing today. It also causes lots of historical and moral problems. To understand this, you must read the Old Testament as a philosopher, historian, writer, and student of literature—I don’t know why some Christians don’t (well, the book is ten-inches thick), especially since the Gospels’ bedrock of “credibility” crumbles without the OT’s Messianic predictions and overtones. Know your faith. Doesn’t your (after)life depend on it?

            In brief, the OT is the account of the Israelites. As God’s chosen people, they fight other tribes and amongst themselves for political position in the Middle East. The OT details the universe’s creation, the establishment of the Jewish state, historical books which relate stories of exile and return, and many sections of poetry and philosophical prose. In Jewish thought the OT accounts for their special relationship with God. For Christians, the OT paves the way for Christ.

            Some Jewish and Christian authorities teach that the Old Testament was divinely inspired. God wrote it through human hands. Thus its words are undeniable. Of note is Buddha’s reaction to such claims of the Hindu Upanishads. He believed them preposterous as anything written by man is “corrupted” by that man’s motives. Today’s scholarly thought is that the OT was written piecemeal over centuries, rewritten and revised again and again.

They date the formation of the OT’s earliest books between 500-300 BCE. The documentary hypothesis diagrams the composition of the Pentateuch, the first five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy (for a fuller description than I am willing to do here, follow this link: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/doc-hyp.pdf). By noting ancient manuscripts’ differences in language, vocabulary, and thematic concerns, scholars divide the Pentateuch line-by-line into five authors. These five are J, E, D, P, and R. For example, P concerns himself with establishing religious authority, while E is concerned with documenting Jewish tradition. In E, God is called “El” or Lord, and frequently takes human form. J’s God “Yahweh” is a warrior, violent and impulsive, and often tries to kill the very characters he establishes as Israelite leaders. So, when you hear someone say the God of the OT was a bastard (as Richard Dawkins does…yawn…all the time…), they are partially correct. Overall, however, the OT God has just as much regret, compassion, and love as he does anger. If anything, he is a powerful, telepathic, moody deity plagued by teenage mood swings and whiny worshippers.

            These authorial differences allow us to see the OT in a different light, not as the ultimate word of God, but as an attempt to document a people. In fact, in some circles it is believed this is exactly the OT’s purpose. The glaring tonal inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies do not dampen the text’s power. Instead, it heightens it by allowing readers to see how a people changed in their views of the world and themselves. It’s almost as if someone handed you a book and said, “This book explains our primitive ideas and concepts. This is how we got here today.” The circles of the more literal and priestly bent still maintain that the OT is the divinely inspired, unbreakable work of God, and the establishment of his kingdom on Earth.

            While on this point, it is important to realize the Jewish God is not the only God in the first books of the OT. He is their God, more powerful than others, and thus to be worshipped. Monotheism did not take hold of the Jewish people until some centuries after Abraham and maybe continued in Moses’ time within various tribes. This is called henotheism, in which you acknowledge other deities may exist, but you worship yours because it is the best. There is also monolatrism, which recognizes foreign deities as existing, but does not worship them. There is some argument the Ten Commandments are monolatrisic. I won’t get into that here. Again, it is most important to know the OT books display the evolution of a faith, not merely the faith itself.

            Second, when reading the OT’s historical books, it is important to know modern written “history,” concerned with facts, dates, and events, is different than the ancients’ concepts. Ancient history was stories, with character types, tropes, and repeated themes. Although they used historic figures and events, ancient written history, especially when compiled for worship, was a teaching tool. It was not literal, and its heavy reliance on oral traditions causes its historical validity to become suspect. Remember the telephone game in elementary school? The same principle applies here except we’re talking about a long, long history orally passed down through thousands and thousands of years until priests finally “documented” it..

            So, with these ideas in mind, I sat down to read the OT. I found it to be an intellectually stimulating experience. Just because I don’t believe its dogma, doesn’t mean I had nothing to learn. I learned much, especially with the essays, prologues, and footnotes in the New Oxford Standard Edition Bible (buy it here, you won’t regret it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195289617/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0195289609&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1GHG7D3WYHCF3ME7Q8BZ) .           I no longer look at the OT as many do—bullshit stories about ancient idiots doing deplorable things—but as a set of stories meant to be dissected, closely read, and discussed. After all, if I was to dismiss all such stories as bullshit, I wouldn’t have any books on my shelf.

Investigations of a Spiritual Variety

I’m invested in spirituality, not religion or dogma. No matter how my parents protest, I wasn’t raised in a religious household. Although we celebrated Christmas and Easter, didn’t eat fish on Good Friday, and prayed before meal and bedtimes, I was never taught scripture. We went to church once, a passion play. I was four years old. I cried until my parents took me home. “Why are they beating that man?” I wouldn’t get a sufficient answer until later in life. As a kid, I knew God lived in the sky and Jesus helped the poor and died on the cross. That was it.

            Then grandparents began to pass away. My parents, lapsed Catholics soured to the Church by a priest who insisted they were marrying for lust, began to attend church services once more. I didn’t go at first. I was intimidated. God was like a club from which I’d been excluded. Yet, even if an invitation were extended, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a member.

            Tired of feeling like an outsider, the summer of my freshmen year of college I picked up my parents’ Bible and read it cover to cover. My life changed.

            I didn’t fully understand what I read. Yet, the concept that stuck was that something out there was watching over me. It loved me, wanted me to do well. So, I prayed for things. I got them in rapid succession: a girlfriend, a major that was right for me, writing awards, straight As. Everything lined up bam-bam-bam.

            My prayers became more outlandish. I wanted more.

            Family members died, family drama ensued. It drove me nuts. Writing got tougher. Relationships became harder to manage. I read different spiritual texts, not wanting to understand them, but for them to tell me how to get what I wanted. I thought there was something wrong with me. Maybe I had somehow earned God’s disfavor. Maybe I was Job. Maybe this religious stuff was all bullshit. Ultimately, I lost belief.

            The truth is I lost belief in myself.

            I’m glad I did. To quote Kabbalah, “How is wisdom found without first stumbling over it?” For me, this stumbling has been essential. It’s opened my eyes. I’ve realized prayers are not always answered and even if they are, it doesn’t mean your personal deity answered them. In fact, it most likely means you believed enough in yourself to get the job done. I don’t necessarily believe there is some great being watching over us all day, loving us, making sure we’re doing okay. Some days are just better than others. And I don’t believe there is some kind of cloudy toga party or fiery inferno awaiting us after death. I live in the present. Yes, I look to the future, but as Buddha says, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”  Yet, there is still something mystical about our world, some dream-like reality I find woven into our everyday, physical, plain Jane lives of “reason.” Since the belief systems that have grown throughout history are so intrinsic to our species’ development, and can enrich lives if one don’t dismiss all of it as bullshit in an effort to be “right,” I can’t ignore them.

            This summer I’ve read religious text after religious text, from the Bible to the Bhagavad-Gita to God is Not Great and many, many more. I’ve pursued scholarly articles, discussions, and histories to supplement my understanding. I’ve found it fascinating. Most eye-opening has been the scholarly views that eschew the scriptural literalism of the crazies we see every day (May 21^st, 2011, the day we all had a good laugh) in favor of truth. My respect and understanding has been elevated not only for these texts’ ideas, but for their impact on literature and thought.

            I’ll be sharing my findings piece-by-piece. Don’t expect them to be in chronological order or grouped by faiths. I’ll start with Genesis in the Old Testament, move to Buddhism, Kabbalah, etc. What is most important is not to prove which religion is right or wrong (a futile exercise), but to help more people understand what has become garbled. “Wisdom is the path to enlightenment,” Buddha says. I just want to turn on some damn lights.