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phynali · 3 years

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Canonization and Fandom Purity Culture

I wrote a 1k-word twitter thread (as proof that I am Not made for Twitter and it’s goddamn 240-character limit) and am pasting it here with edits and updates (it’s now 2k words).

I have thoughts to share (which I know have been stated more eloquently before by others) about this trend of demanding/obsessing that certain ships become "canon" and how it overlaps with the rise of fandom purity culture.

Under the cut.

Here in 2021 there is a seemingly large and certainly loud and active contingent of online fandoms who desire (or even demand) "canon validation" for a given interpretation of a source material. This is more true with shipping than anywhere else.

First, it is important to note that the trend is not limited to queer ships or to any single fandom. In the past few years I've seen it for Riverdale, Voltron, Supernatural (perhaps most extreme?), The 100, etc., and less recent with the MCU, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 5-0, etc. It is a broad trend across ships, fandoms, and mediums.

So if it is more common for queer ships, it is hardly unique to them. Similarly, pretending that it is about queer representation is a clever misdirect to disguise the fact that it is most often about ships and shipping wars. If you ever need proof of that, consider that a character can be queer without being in a given relationship or reciprocating another character's affections. Thus a call for more/better queer rep itself is very different than a call for specific ships to be made canon.

Also note that when audiences frame it as wanting to recognize a specific *character* as queer, it is almost always in the context of a ship. Litmus test: would making that character queer but having them *explicitly reject* the other half of the ship be seen as a betrayal?

(Note: none or this is to say we shouldn't push for more queer rep and more *quality and well-written* queer rep! Just that that isn't what I'm talking about here, and not what seeking canon validation for a specific interpretation or a specific ship is almost ever about.)

Why does this matter?

the language of representation and social justice should not be co-opted to prop up ship wars

it is reciprocal with a trend toward increasing toxicity in transformative fandom spaces

Number 1 here is self-explanatory (I hope). Let's chat about 2.

Demands for canon validation correlate with a rise in fanpol / fandom purity culture. What is fandom purity culture (and fandom policing)? This toxic mentality is about justifying one's shipping preferences and aiming to be pure (non-problematic) in your fictional appetites regarding romance and sex.

Note that this purity culture is so named as it arises linearly from American Protestantism, conservative puritanical anxiety around thought crimes, and overlaps in many ways with terf ideologies and regressively anti-kink paradigms.

It goes like this: problematic content is "gross" and therefore morally reprehensible. Much like how queer sex/relationships get labelled as "gross" (Other) and thus morally sinful, or how kink gets labelled as "harmful" and thus morally wrong. The Problematic label is applied by fanpol to ships with offset age or power dynamics, complicated histories, and anything they choose to label as "harmful". As such, they would decry my comparison here to queerphobia itself as also being harmful, because their (completely fictional) targets are ~actually~ evil.

(The irony of this is completely lost on them).

This mode of interacting with creative works leaves no room to explore dark or erotic themes or dynamics which may exist in fiction but not healthily in reality. Gothic romance is verboten. Even breathe the word incest and you will be labelled a monster (nevermind Greek tragedy or GoT).

As with most puritanical bullshit, fanpol ideology only applies these beliefs to sex and never to violence/murder/etc, proving what lies at its core. It also demands its American-based values be applied to all fictional periods and places as the One True Moral Standard. It evangelizes – look no further than how these people try to recruit others to their cause, aim to elevate themselves as righteous, and try to persuade (‘save’) others from their degenerate ways of thinking.

“See the light” they promise “here are our callouts and blog posts to convince you. Decry your past sins of problematic shipping, be baptized by our in-group adulation and welcome, and then go forth and send hate to others until they too see the light.” In many ways “get therapy” by the antis is akin to “I’ll pray for you” by the Christian-right (and ultimately ironic).

(Although it has been pointed out to me that these fans are likely not themselves specifically ex-evangelicals, but rather those who have brushed up with evangelical norms and modes of thinking without specifically being victims of it. In many ways they are more simply conservative Christian in temperament and attitude without necessarily being raised into religion by belief).

What this has to do with canon validation is that these fans look to canon for approval, for Truth. On the one hand, if it is in the canon then it must be good / pure or at least acceptable. The authority (canon) has deemed it thus. It is safe and acceptable to discuss and to enjoy watching or consuming. In this way, validation from canon means a measure of safety from being Bad and Problematic.

For example, where a GoT fan could discuss Cersei/Jaime's (toxic, interesting) dynamic in depth as it related to the canon, fans who shipped Jon/Sansa (healthy, interesting) were Gross and Bad. The canon as Truth provided a safety net, a launch point. "It's GRRM, not me, who is problematic." It wasn’t okay to ship the problematic bad gross incest ship, but it being in the canon material meant it was open for discussion, for nuance, for “this adds an interesting layer to the story” which is denied to all non-canon ships labelled as problematic.

(Note: there are of course people who have zero interest in watching GoT for a whole slew of very valid reasons, including but not limited to the incest. That’s a different to this trend. A less charged example might be The Umbrella Academy, where a brother canonically is in love with his sister and antis still praise the show, but if you dare to ship any of the potential incest ships then you are the one who is disgusting).

On the other hand, a very interesting alternate (or additional) explanation for this phenomenon was raised to me on twitter. (These ideas aren’t mine originally, but I wholly endorse them as a big part of what is likely going on): Namely, as with authoritarian individuals in general, they see themselves as right and correct, but the canon (which has not yet validated their ship) is not correct, and is in fact problematic, and so they can save the canon from itself.

As mentioned, these fanpol types see their interpretation as Good and Pure. So if they can push (demand, bully) the canon into conforming to their worldview and validating their interpretation, then they have shown the (sinful) creators the light and led them to the righteous path. This only works if the canon allows itself to saved though, otherwise the creators remain Evil for spurning them.

How is this different from fans simply hoping for their ship to be canon?

For a second here, let’s rewind to the 90s (since Whedon has been in the news recently). This “I want it to be canon” thing isn’t 100% new, of course. We saw this trend then for the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was different then. At the time, fans who hoped for a ship to be canon might have been cheering for a problematic one to begin with (Buffy/Spike). So shipping was still present, minus vocal fanpol.

(And Buffy fans learned that canon validation...can leave a lot to be desired. A heavy lesson was learned about the ways that fan desires can play out horrifically in canon, and how some things are best left out of the hands of canon-writers).

These days, this is still largely true. Many fans hope for their ships to go canon, as they always have. There are tropes like “will they/won’t they” that TV shows may even be designed around, which a certain narrative anticipation and a very deliberate build up to that.

But while shipping *hopes* occur for many fans, almost all ships fans that *demand* to go canon and obsess over are now the ones deemed as Unproblematic, or as Less Problematic. I’m talking here about the ships that aren’t necessarily an explicit will/won’t they dynamic but do have some canon dynamic that leads them to being shipped, but which the creators aren’t necessarily deliberately teasing and building up a romantic end-game for.

These ships often have fans who are happy to stick to fandom, but there has also been a huge uptick in the portion of fans who are approaching shipping with an explicit lens of “will they go canon?” and “don’t you want them to be canon?” and now even “they have to go canon” and “the canon is wrong if they don’t make this ship canon”, to a final end-point of “if the ship doesn’t go canon, the source material is Wrong and Bad.”

These latter opinions are the one we see more by extreme fans (‘stans’), hardcore shippers, but especially by fanpol-types, the ones who embrace fandom purity culture at least to some extent.

Why them?

In pushing for canon validation, fanpol types seek to elevate their (pure) interpretation of canon. As mentioned above, it’s validation of their authority, a safety-net, and a way to save the canon from itself if only they can bully the canon into validating their right and good interpretation.

There’s also another reason, which is that canon validation is a tool to bludgeon those seen as problematic. They can use it to denounce other (problematic) ships as Not Being Canon and therefore highlight their own as Right and Good, because it is represented in the True Meaning of the Work.

Canon validation then is a cudgel sought by virtuous crusaders to wield against their unclean enemies. It is an ideological pursuit. It is organised around identity and in groups sometimes as insular as cults.

How does this happen?

Fanpol tend to be younger or more vulnerable fans, susceptible to authoritarian manipulators. As many have highlighted before, authoritarian groups and exclusionary ideologies like terfs are very good at using websites like tumblr to mobilize others around their organizing beliefs. Fanpol tend to feel legitimate discomfort, but instead of taking responsibility for their media engagement, ringleaders stoke and help them direct their discomfort as anger onto others; “I feel ashamed and uncomfortable, and therefore you should be held accountable for my emotions.” Authoritarian communities endorse social dominance orientations, deference to ringleaders, and obedient faith to the principles those ringleaders endorse.

As these fans attach more and more of their identity to a given media (or ship), and derive more and more validation and more of their belongingness needs from this fanpol community, they also become more and more anxious about being excluding from this group. This is because such communities have rigid rules and very conditional bases for social acceptance. Question or "betray" the organizing ideology and be punished or excommunicated. If that is all you have, you are left with nothing. Being labelled problematic then is a social death.

What this means is that these fans cannot accept all interpretations of a media as equally valid: to do so Betrays the ideology. It promises exclusion. And, in line with a perspective around ‘saving’ canon and leading others into the light – forcing and bending the canon to their will is what will make it Good (and therefore acceptable to enjoy, and therefore proof of them as righteous by having saved others). As was also pointed out to me on twitter, endorsement from canon or its creators also satiates that deep need they have for authority figures to approve of them.

Due to all of this, these fans come to obsess over canon validation of their own interpretation. In a way, they have no other option but to do so. They need this validation -- as their weapon, as their authority, as their safety net, as their approval, as their evangelical mission of saviorship.

Canon validation is proof: I am Good. I am Right(eous). I am Safe.

(In many ways, I do ache for some of these people, so wrapped up in toxic communities and mindsets and so afraid to step out of line for fear of swift retribution, policing their own thoughts and art against the encroaching possibility that anything be less than pure. It’s not healthy, it’s never going to be healthy.)

In the end, people are going to write their own stories. You are well within your rights to critique those stories, to hate them, to interpret them how you will, but you can never control their story (it's theirs).

Some final notes:

This trend may be partially to do with queer ships now being *able* to go canon where before so no such expectation would exist. Similarly, social media has made this easier to vocalize. Still, who makes these demands and the underlying reasons are telling. There are also many legitimate critiques of censorship, queerbaiting (nebulous discussions to be had here), and homophobia in media to be had, and which may front specific ships in their critique. But critique is distinct from asking that canon validate one's own interpretation.

#fandom purity culture #antis #discourse

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mikhalsarah · 3 years

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RIP Open Orthodoxy, eaten alive by parasitic “Wokeness”...

There are already three streams of Judaism where women can be rabbis (Conservative/Masorti, Reform, and Reconstructionist), I should know, I belong to one of them. I’ve never entirely understood the Orthodox commitment to sidelining women in this day and age, but the simple fact is, people who are unhappy with Orthodox halakhah in this area have other places to pray, and the stubborn refusal to pray in any of “those places”, yet fighting tooth and nail to make their own shuls become just like them, smack of a weird sort of snobbish attachment to the word “orthodoxy”....even though the rest of Orthodox is but a hair’s breadth from considering them a treif liberal “fake” Judaism like the rest of us already.

As difficult, but possible, as the issue of female rabbis would be to bring about, (seeing as it is a rabbinic prohibition based largely on cultural attitudes no longer in play in western society), the issue of getting the Orthodox to accept gay couples is another matter. Again, not an insurmountable issue, Centrist Orthodox Rabbi Schmuley Boteach has written quite openly about the need to find a place in Orthodox shuls for gay and lesbian Jews. However Orthodox culture is never going to let them hold hands during service or kiddush, for the simple reason that public displays of sexual/romantic affection, even between heterosexual married couples, are frowned upon everywhere from the sanctuary to the grocery store, due to the strong feeling that sexuality should be put aside, or sublimated, when encountering certain kinds of holiness (engaging in prayer etc). Of course, that does not mean that in Judaism sex is the opposite of holiness in some way, or else it would be forbidden to have sex on Shabbat. Since marital sex is a mitzvah (commandment, meritorious act) on Shabbat, better to understand it as a different kind of holiness, one that is not compatible with some other mitzvot (like prayer) or with public life in general. Sexuality itself is a sort of holiness surrounded by taboos and necessitating the utmost privacy in Judaism, so this is ironically probably the hill Orthodoxy would die on, not figuring out how to tolerate the gays.

I heartily agree that it’s time to stop being racist to the Palestinians. Strange though that a “Woke” rabbi still can’t bring himself to call them what they call themselves, and in typical Israeli/Zionist fashion emphasizes their Arab otheness, rather than their indigenousness...thus making it seem rather like a favour being granted to them out of the goodness of his Woke heart, rather than an acknowledgement of their intrinsic belongingness. (This kind of stuff is typical for Woke social justice, which consistently cares far more about virtue-signalling and screaming at “white people”, or whomever else is deemed an Oppressor in the situation, than listening and paying attention to those who are actually oppressed.)

I spent decades of my life as a vegetarian, years of that as a vegan. Even though for medical reasons I had to adopt a diet which relies on meat for sufficient protein, I still try to limit my meat consumption. I am very pleased that so many people are seeing the value of vegetarian and vegan diets, and that even regular omnivore folk are adopting “meatless Mondays” and so forth. I’d be even better pleased with governments helping to encourage it by working to make it less expensive if/where possible. I’d nod my head approvingly if rabbis suggested meat-eating be reserved for Shabbat, if one didn’t feel able to give it up entirely. However, even when I didn’t practice (Judaism) and was secular it would never have occurred to me to ban it wholesale. I’m just not Puritan enough for banning things, I prefer the Quakerly ways of “convincement”. The Woke, on the other hand, are full-bore Puritan, convert-the-heathen-masses.

This is perhaps the strangest part of entire essay. This newly minted “rabbi” is publicly expressing the desire to not just overhaul a big chunk of halakhah in order to make Judaism less restrictive and bring it further into line with the mores of the gentile world... a process that has been going on forever, whether excessively quickly (Reform) or excruciatingly slowly (Haredi)... but is calling to make Judaism more restrictive in other ways, by banning things permitted by halakhah which happens never or so infrequently that I can’t recall an instance offhand. And he’s willing to use secular governments to achieve it by force.

I recall hearing conservatives decades ago saying “Inside the heart of every liberal is a fascist screaming to get out” and laughing derisively at how they could think that. I laugh no more, though I contend that it is a particular species of illiberal liberal, known as the progressive activist, that is to blame rather than liberals in general. Still...there it is, and the regular liberals are generally no help opposing their own extremists because deep down they harbour that intrinsic liberal guilt that they are never doing enough or being enough to be truly authentic and useful. For authenticity and “real change” they look ever to the fringes, on the assumption that the more wildly opposed to society in general an ideology is, the better it is, if only they weren’t too cowardly and comfortable to join up and suffer like the “real” activists.

I have to add here, how nice it is despite not having set foot in any shul in over a year, to still have something of the religious Jewish mindset, which makes impressive demands on your time, money, and moral fastidiousness, but at the same time reminds you constantly that you’ll never be perfect and will never accomplish everything you want or that God asks of you and God already accepts that as a given. “It is not yours to complete the task (of repairing the world), but neither are you free to desist from it.” -Pirkei Avot 2:21. Despite the reputation Judaism has for being guilt-inducing, at least we are free from the overwhelming and psychologically destructive levels of guilt induced by secular liberalism, which now has decided, via Wokeness, that merely existing in a society that is imperfect is a damnable offense, even if it is, on balance, one of the least imperfect societies around. This is how Jews like me know that Wokeness is not just a new religion, it’s an offshoot of Christianity, where just being born damns you to a state of perpetual sin.

This authenticity-of-the-extremists mindset blinds them to the fact that while the fringes are the birthplace of some excellent critiques and paradigm-changing ideas that have been of great benefit, those benefits most often only come when those ideas are tempered by counter-critiques and more pragmatic people who can tolerate the loss of ideological purity required to make them work in practice. Also invisible to the liberal mind are those historical moments when progressives have backed ideas that were...well, the term “clusterfucks” springs to mind.

Progressives less than a century ago were enamoured with ideas ranging from Eugenics to Italian Fascism (less so with Naziism, but even that had its adherents until the war and the atrocities of the camps coming home to roost). They backed Communism to such a degree that it took Kronstadt to shake most of them loose, and they still idolize Che Guevara, the gay-hating, probably racist, illiberal who put people to death without trial and “really liked killing” (his words) and can’t hear a word against Communist China (”That’s racist to the Chinese!”) or Islamic extremists (”That’s Islamophobic!), despite the fact that Communist China is “re-indoctrinating” the Muslim Uighers and using them as slave labour (in part for the profits and in part because keeping the men and women separated prevents them breeding more Muslim Uighers), and despite the fact that the Islamists throw gay men off roofs in public executions. When you do get a left-liberal to admit something on the Left has gone wrong at all, they immediately shift to rationalizing it as somehow really being the fault of conservatives all along...even in a case like Eugenics where religious and other conservatives were fighting it tooth and nail.

(NB: This is not an endorsement of conservatives, who have their own sets of problems but who, when they finally do change their mind on an issue, don’t try to rationalize their former wrongheadedness by claiming it was really the fault of left-liberals that they ever believed such things in the first place)

And that brings us back to Zionism and the Woke. The Woke cannot for the life of them admit that it was secular, and often quite far left, Jews that birthed Zionism directly out of the leftist “liberation” traditions of the day (albeit with a healthy side of pro-Western colonialism-admiring fervour for being “an outpost of the West” shining the light of rationality on the barbaric, backward, religiosity of the Middle East). They don’t want to see it. It disturbs their comfortably simple narrative, which prefers to maintain that it was the “whiteness” of the original Zionist Jews and their early followers that was the problem, not their politics.

But Zionism is merely the predictable result of what happens when you take an oppressed people and tell them that their oppression entitles them to do whatever they need to in order to end their oppression and that violence is not violence when perpetrated by the oppressed. That the world owes them, and their descendants, something in perpetuity for having oppressed them, some sort of special treatment, and that it must never withdraw that special dispensation because that itself would be oppressing them again. The fact that what the Jews would feel like they needed to do was ethnically-cleanse their former homeland of people who had once shared it with them (both Jews and Palestinians can be traced to a shared ancestry in the region going back about 50,000 years) and necessitating a whole new liberation movement to free them was an unintended consequence of th\e liberation movement, but a consequence nonetheless.

The Woke cannot admit that Zionism is, in large part, a direct consequence of the leftist liberation project, and Woke Jews (who are almost invariably “white”) can’t admit that the rest of the Woke movement hates them. They truly deserve each other.

Ah, well, at least this “woke” rabbi isn’t trying to qualify for the cognitive dissonance finals by being Woke and a Zionist at the same time like the current rabbi of my (rapidly sinking) former synagogue. We’ve had rabbis that horrified the congregation by being too right-wing (mostly on halakhic issues rather than politics), and we’ve had rabbis that horrified (the older portion of) the congregation by being too left-wing and running off to march in Selma. Thanks to this rabbi haranguing the congregation daily about LGBTQ issues to the point that even the LGBTQ Jews got tired of hearing him (our sexuality is NOT our whole fucking existence...no pun intended) and marching around the Sanctuary with the Israeli flag on Shabbat (an honour reserved for the Torah even by the most fervently Zionist among us, none of whom are yours truly) we now have the dubious distinction of being a congregation horrified by a rabbi being both too left-wing and too right-wing simultaneously.

Apropos of nothing, there is now a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn of my former synagogue and the membership at the Orthodox synagogue has grown with astonishing rapidity. We can extrapolate from this that in 4 years time, should the U.S. Republicans run any candidate remotely sane, they will sweep the election.

#judaism #woke #wokeism #zionism #sjw nonsense #sjws ruin everything #open orthodoxy #militant vegans #woke is a religion #puritan #vs #quaker

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loyolahcmass · 4 years

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Homily on Righteous by Juice WRLD

Here is the preview of Fr. Rossi’s homily about the song Righteous by Juice WRLD:

Fighting to be “Righteous”

Juice WRLD

“Under attack, in my soul

When it's my time, I'll know

Never seen a hell so cold

Yeah, we'll make it out, I know

We'll run right through the flames, let's go.”

“Righteous” Juice WRLD

Jarad Anthony Higgins, known professionally as Juice WRLD, may be gone, but his spirit lingers.

The rapper and songwriter from Chicago died in December 2019 at age 21 after suffering a seizure.

The cause of death was later revealed to be an accidental overdose.

__________

His music continues on as well.

At midnight on April 24, the rapper's first posthumous single, "Righteous," was released alongside a video.

That video takes you on quite an emotional ride.

__________

The visual splices together footage from Juice WRLD's short but eventful life.

We see him working in the studio, performing onstage, kissing his girlfriend, and smiling a lot.

The second half of the vid turns into an animated adventure, in which Juice fights his demons before leaving Earth and flying into the galaxy.

The clip ends with the words "Legends Never Die" scrawled across the screen.

__________

As for the song itself, it's a mellow, melodic number that's packed ironically with references to pills, demons, and "anxiety the size of a planet."

It's tough to get through, but essential listening because of its message.

But especially when paired with the video, it's a nice reminder of Juice WRLD's undeniable compassion and artistry that came out of his afflictions.

__________

Fittingly, "Righteous" was announced in a tweet from the rapper's family.

They wrote, "Juice was a prolific artist who dedicated his life to making music.

“Choosing how to share his upcoming music with the world has been no easy feat.

__________

“Honoring the love Juice felt for his fans while shining a light on his spirit are the most important parts of this process to us.

“We are releasing a song called 'Righteous,' which Juice made from his home studio in LA.

“It was very close to his heart.

“We hope you enjoy this new music and continue to keep Juice's spirit alive."

__________

Earlier, Juice's mother, Carmela Wallace, announced the establishment of the “Live Free 999 Fund”.

The fund will provide access to education, prevention, and treatment options for opioid addiction and other forms of drug abuse.

“I was aware of his struggles with addiction, anxiety, and depression.

__________

“We had many conversations about his challenges with these issues.

“I know he truly wanted to be free from the demons that tormented him.

“Now I'm going to share his struggles with the world with the objective of helping others."

__________

That’s what Juice’s positive message of 999, which featured on his merch, as well as in his music, sought to capture.

“999 represents taking whatever hell, whatever problems, whatever bad situation, whatever struggles you’re going through and turning them into something positive.

“It’s the power of God.

“Use it to push yourself forward,” Juice told MTV in 2018.

__________

999 is the opposite of 666, which is the "Number of the Beast" in modern popular culture.

666 has become one of the most widely recognized symbols for the Antichrist or, alternatively, the devil.

The number 666 is used to invoke Satan.

By employing 999, Juice was asking God to intercede for him in his struggles in life, especially his battles with drugs.

__________

His honesty about his own trials unlocked the door for fans, friends, and peers to heal from their own wounds and become better versions of themselves.

This is powerfully conveyed in the track “Righteous”.

The title of this song points to the idea of Juice WRLD wanting to “feel righteous”.

__________

Righteousness is one of the chief attributes of God as portrayed in the Bible.

Its chief meaning concerns ethical conduct

In the Book of Job, the title character is introduced to us as a person who is perfect in righteousness.

__________

Within the context of the song's lyrics, this actually alludes to the rapper rockin’ an “all-white Gucci suit,” with white being the color most often associated with pious living.

But outside of that reference he doesn’t present himself as virtuous or blameless.

__________

In fact, most of the lyrics actually center on his sense of helplessness and stress when abusing drugs.

In the first verse he plainly acknowledges the inherent dangers in his habit.

“Righteous” is based on the theme of internal turmoil; he feels constrained to resort to drugs even while trying to have recourse to God.

__________

“The last shall be first.”

Gospel of Matthew

Jesus tells us that God takes the initiative in seeking us out, especially when we are feeling lost.

In other words, God continues to love us in spite of our sins and weakness.

I think Juice was aware of this.

Even in the muddled and confused state he was often in, he insisted on using his symbol for God and goodness, 999, at the very heart of his message to us and to himself.

__________

Speaking about this, I have to comment on the picture for the track "Righteous".

It portrays the animated character of the rapper putting on an all-white robe with the number 999 on it.

This is noteworthy for someone like Juice who was raised as a Bible-Christian.

__________

God loves His creation and he fashioned it good.

But sin corrupted it.

He has a plan to return it to its original state of perfection, and He will reward those who help Him carry out this plan.

Those people are the “white-robed army”.

__________

Juice wasn’t claiming that he was righteous by wearing white.

But righteousness was something to which he aspired.

He wanted to walk with Jesus, and he was trying as hard as he could to keep up.

__________

Remarkably, in his overwhelming struggles with drug addition, he wasn’t just thinking of himself.

He was reflecting on us as well.

Just listen again to these lyrics of “Righteous”.

“Yeah, we'll make it out, I know.”

That’s

HIS

legacy and

OUR

hope.

#righteous #righteous juice wrld #juice wrld righteous #juice wrld #juice wrld music #homily #homilies #catholic homily #Catholic Mass #hcm homilies #loyolahcmass

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kathyprior4200 · 4 years

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The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno

(What it says on the back)

“You poor sack of former human skin and sin. You died and are stuck in Hell. Now what? Fear not, for in this book, you shall find the answers to seek on what you need to know to survive the inferno. You’ll learn how to stay safe and entertain yourself during the Extermination. You’ll get a sneak peek on the origins of voodoo, radio, and Jambalaya. And as for becoming a better person and getting out of this mess? You’re probably stuck here forever until you die again, but this book will provide you with handy information and a much needed cure for your boredom!”

*Includes a free pamphlet for the Hazbin Hotel and how to tune in to 66.6 FM.*

About the author: Alastor “Hazbin” Cajun was born January 24, 1896 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He died in 1933 and is now one of the most powerful demons Hell has ever seen. In his spare time, he loves broadcasting his murders on the radio, cooking meals, making dolls, and performing. As of 2020, he is 87 years old in Hell and 124 years chronologically. However, his friend princess Charlie is 200 + years old, despite having the appearance of a teenager!”

This is a story of a book, a book called “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno”--not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the Exterminations occurred, no Earthling has ever heard of it.

It is a remarkable book in Hell, though.

It is highly successful, written by the one and only Radio Demon Alastor. It’s more successful than Angel Dust’s “Guns, and Poses: Turf Wars in Style,” “Lust is a Must,” and “Being Gay in a World of Macho Sinners.” Unfortunately for the following authors, Charlie Magne’s book “Rainbows Inside Everyone” remains one of the lowest ranked books along with Vaggie’s “Men Are Pigs.”

Alastor got his book revised by his associate Niffty and published by Husk (after bribing him with money and booze. Niffty had to help him with the publishing process and stop him from using his money to bet on who would win the local Hellhound races.) Alastor hopes that his book will soon topple Hell’s number one bestseller from the king of Hell: Lucifer Magne’s “Fall From Grace.”

It has many passages that may be inaccurate, and it does warn the reader never to cross said Radio Demon, unless they’re curious about what their organs look like from the outside.

The majority of this story is broadcasted on radio, for if all the info were piled in a book, it’d take several leagues of demons to carry it.

There are many benefits to this book. This book is slightly cheaper than Angel Dust’s works and it has the word “Smile!” written in large friendly letters on the cover. In an old fashioned TV is the number 66, the meaning of life in Hell.

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Jambalaya: (Page 14)

“Jambalaya is a traditional dish that originated in Louisiana in the 18th century. The dish was a result of attempts to make a variation of paella for Spanish colonists. Although the recipe was adapted by the Spanish, but Senegalese slaves brought the knowledge of rice cultivation form West Africa. German immigrants brought their secrets of sausage making to Cajun country. And one can’t forget the influence of French and Native Americans, whom contributed more flavor. (meaning they likely added peppers and seasoning, not their own flesh).

“Jambalaya consists of rice, sausage, shrimp, and a variety of vegetables mixed together in a tasty gumbo. The “holy trinity” mixture consists of diced onion, celery, and bell peppers, a necessity for flavor in regards to the traditional method.

Common meats used are smoked pork sausage, paired with chicken, though diced ham, shrimp, crabmeat or crawfish can also be added.

There are two main types of Jambalaya: Red Jambalaya, also known as Creole Jambalaya, due to the use of red tomatoes and Brown Jambalaya, more often used in Cajun country. Both are equally tasty.

Jambalaya is a rice dish, thus it is not a gumbo nor is it etouffee. Gumbo is more like soup and etouffee is more like a stew.

Fun Fact: hunting is a beloved pastime in south Louisiana. It’s not uncommon for hunters to add game like duck, pheasant, and venison to their Jambalaya recipe. (Venison is my personal favorite, especially after a good hunt.) If you really want to go bold, feel free to add small slices of human meat to create a unique lighter pork flavor.)

Do be warned: Jambalaya is no simple dish to make at times. It is a bad idea to add gunpowder and or wasabi to the dish. Doing so will likely result in the dish exploding in your poor mother’s face. Indeed, my mother’s recipe nearly killed her when she drank too much Southern Comfort Whisky ™ and decided that adding gunpowder was a great idea. Her face was burnt badly afterwards and there may have been a few slabs of her dark skin that fell into the dish. When I tasted it, the kick was straight outta Hell! The spice and chaotic spin of flavor…fantastic!”

Here’s how to make it in a nutshell: brown your meat, sautee your vegetables, add rice, add liquid bring to a boil, stir, reduce heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Add them all together.

For full instructions, see the next page.

For instructions on how to hunt deer, see page 20.”

Reference:

McCormick, “Jambalaya Recipes, History, and FAQs.”

https://www.mccormick.com/zatarains/jambalaya

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Voodoo, Hoodoo and dark magic (Page 177)

“According to Benjamin Radford, Voodoo is a pop-culture subpart of Voudon, an Afro-Caribbean religion that originated in Haiti. Followers can be found all over the world, including the United States. Leslie Desmangles, Haitian professor at Hartford’s Trinity College describes Voodoo as a system of ethics, stories, songs, proverbs, and folklore that is passed down through generations. It is an elaborate folk medical practice system and to her, it is a way of life. (“The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal” Prometheus Books, 1996.)

In Voodoo belief, Bondye is the unknowable and the supreme creator God. Voudon emphasizes the worship of spirits called Loa, each one who represents a different aspect of life. Loas can help or impede human affairs by possessing the bodies of their worshippers. They can be good or bad or anywhere in between, so it’s best to always treat them with respect and leave proper offerings (not human sacrifice but more like animals, plants, gems etc.) Spiritual possession in Christianity is considered to be evil, but not in Voudon. In a ceremony guided by a priest or priestess, a connection to the spirit world and the ancestors is said to be an invaluable experience. Many practitioners believe in reincarnation.

Voodoo deities are as follows:

Loa Nations:

Rada – (creation, orderly, beneficial, water spirits)

Petro – (destruction, aggressive, warlike, New World)

Ghede – (spirits of the dead, loud, rude fun family, eating glass and hot peppers)

Kongo – Marinette, Simbi (water serpents, plants, poisons)

Nago – Ogoun –Loa of craftsmen, metalwork

Deities:

Bondye: The creator god in the Voodoo religion and the loa answer to him. The loa serve as intermediaries between man and Bondye.

Papa Legba: Sun god Loa associated with the crossroads and serves as an intermediary between man and the spirit world. In some places, he is seen as a fertility god, portrayed with a large erect phallus. In other customs, he is a trickster, or he may be a protector of children. He is associated with red and black, portrayed as an old man with a straw hat accompanied by a dog. He is always the first god to be invoked in ceremonies.

Kalfu: moon god and ruler of the night. Patron deity of sorcerers, and those who practice black magic. He rules bad luck, destruction, and injustices. His favorite drink is rum laced with gunpowder. He is often seen as a darker version of Papa Legba.

Maman Brigitte: Loa associated with death and the underworld. She is the consort of Baron Samedi and is often represented by a black rooster. She is also considered a goddess of justice. Rum and hot peppers are her favorite diet.

Maman Brigitte is portrayed as a light-skinned woman with red hair, it is said that she could be descended from Brigid, the Celtic goddess of the hearth fires and domestic life.

Baron Samedi: Husband of Maman Brigitte, Baron Samedi is the god of death and is both respected and feared as the keeper of cemeteries. He often appears skeletal, wearing a top hat and formal tails and dark glasses. He is also a god of resurrection; only he can welcome a soul to the realm of the dead.

He is known for lewd behavior, swearing, and mating with other women. He is connected to powerful acts of magic and is the leader of the Guede, the family of loa who work with the dead.

Erzulie: goddess of beauty and love, epitome of femininity and womanhood. She represents the cosmic womb in which divinity and humanity are conceived. Erzulie often grieves that which she cannot obtain, and sometimes leaves a ceremony weeping. She is sometimes represented as a black Madonna and other times as an upper class woman in fine clothing and jewelry.

Her three husbands are the war god Ogun, the sea god Agwe and Damballah. Erzulie feels sadness due to the broken hearts of humans.

Loco: The god of wild vegetation, herbs and fruits for killing or healing. He is also the patron deity of doctors and Voodoo priests. His wife is the market goddess Ayzian (also deity of Voodoo priestesses).

Shango: God of fire, judge, fighter, symbolized by double-axe or ram’s horn.

Ogun: War god Loa associated with blacksmiths, warriors, and justice. Practitioners call upon Ogun for matters related to war and conflict and likes offerings of male roosters and dogs. He is symbolized by an iron knife or machete and has a fondness for pretty women and rum.

Ogun stood as Ghede Nibo’s godfather and adopted him.

Oya: goddess of wind, fire, sea, nature and sudden change.

Damballah: The creator of gods and humanity who helped Bondye make the cosmos and is represented by a giant serpent. His coils shaped the heavens and earth and he is the keeper of knowledge, wisdom, and healing magic. Damballah looks after the crippled, albinos, and children. Erzulie is his consort. He loves silver. His son, Simbi is a white snake god who brings rain.

Ayida: The goddess of the rainbow and primary wife to creator Damballah. The pair manifest as intertwined serpents. Ayida also serves as a fertility goddess. Her favorite offerings are white food. Ayizan, her daughter, is goddess of the marketplace and of initiation into the sacred truths, making her the head Mambo (Voodoo priestess.)

Oshun: One of the Orishas, Oshun is a goddess connected to rivers and water. She is associated with wealth, pleasure, love, beauty, and sexuality. Oshun’s colors are orange and golden yellow, green and coral.

Yemaya: motherly goddess of the sea

Obatala: Goddess of the heavens, personification of creative energy: old with white hair

Agwe: The god of the sea and patron deity of sailors and fishermen. Agwe taught humans how to fish and build boats. He is one of the husbands of the love goddess Erzulie. Agwe is green-eyed and dresses like a naval officer.

Zaca: The god of agriculture and the harvest. He dresses in denims and a straw hat. Zaca smokes a pipe, drinks from bottles of rum and wields a machete.

Marassa: Mawa and Lisa: divine twins: male and female energy, personify sun and moon

Radford states that Roman Catholicism imposed their religious beliefs onto many civilizations, including African slaves. The Africans and African Americans combined Catholicism with their West African beliefs. A 1685 law forbade the practice of African religions in the U.S. In fact, slavery was accepted as a tool to convert Africans to Christianity. In the process, many of their spirits became associated with Christian saints.

Even though slavery ended in the 1800’s, followers of Voudon were still persecuted by authorities, and their religion was demonized. In an 1889 book titled “Hayti, or the Black Republic” (Filiquarian, 2012), Voudon was falsely attributed to cannibalism, human sacrifice, and other atrocities. This helped to spread fear of the religion…portraying certain aspects like voodoo dolls, dark magic, zombies etc. in media and literature. Added onto that, it also strengthened racist stereotypes: African Americans were viewed as “primal,” and “savage,” due to their practices and behaviors as perceived by those outside their culture.

Voodoo has gained more respect in modern times, but all too many people don’t know the truth about it. Even today, many Christians associate Voudon and Voodoo with Satanism and the occult. Interestingly enough, voodoo dolls have little to do with the actual rituals.

Here’s how I found out about Voodoo. It started a long time ago back when I was alive. My mother Loretta was Creole, and her ancestors came from Haiti. She told me that my grandmother Antoinette Duvalier was a powerful Voodoo priestess who once lived in Haiti but immigrated to the U.S. as a slave. Even though she was treated like dirt by the predominant owners and whites, she was well respected by those who knew her. Legend states that she was related to Marie LaLaurie, (1787-1849), New Orleans serial killer, cruel to Creole slaves. In fact, my cousin is Clementine Barnabet, a Louisiana voodoo priestess and serial killer, killed families with an axe.

Needless to say, my mother followed in her footsteps as much as possible. Though during her life, she mostly had to work in low level secretary jobs as women didn’t have many opportunities. She taught me everything there was to know about Voodoo, cooking, singing, sewing, (and yes, cannibalism in dire circumstances, though she didn’t like to talk about that.) She warned me multiple times that magic was, indeed, real, and to never use it for evil. There were “evil” Loas as well as “good” ones. She told me that Voodoo wasn’t about cannibalism or sacrifice.

As you can imagine, I didn’t listen in the long run. For several reasons.

One was my father, Louis. A white, strong man with black hair, a mustache and French heritage. He constantly tried to shove the Bible down my throat. He would whip and abuse me whenever I didn’t meet his expectations of being a man. That bastard would sleep with other women behind my mother’s back but of course, she couldn’t do anything about it.

I was scared of him. I was tempted to cry whenever he would hit her for no apparent reason. But both my parents told me to always smile, so I did. I’ve learned to hide my emotions and keep up a façade ever since. It’s necessary when you’re a radio host by day and a serial killer by night. Nobody would suspect a friendly comedian to be the Bayou Butcher/Louisiana Lunatic of New Orleans. It’s how I managed to get away with my actions for so long until my brutal death by dogs and being shot in the head.

Two was the opportunity for power. I learned that in a hard life of bullying at school, and blatant racism for being of mixed heritage, you take any opportunity that comes your way.

I was so caught up in the prospects of deal making that even I started to believe the cannibalism and misconceptions of Voodoo.

Basically, I came across a Satanic ritual book dropped by a group of imps from Hell on accident. It was in this book that I learned about spells, cannibalism, and black magic. I came upon a passage with instructions on how to gain near unlimited power in the afterlife. I made a deal with Kalfu and the Petro Loas of destruction. (My mother supported the benevolent Rada like I did once.) It was a risky one: to gain such power, I would have to bear witness to at least three deaths, a victim, a loved one…and myself. Turns out it all happened, after I killed many victims in Kalfu’s name, and when I eventually died. My mother died from the Spanish Flu and my father got what he deserved after I tracked him down and tortured him. Strangely enough, whether it’d be guilt or his meat I ate, I felt sick for several days afterwards.

My deal with Kalfu and the dark Loas was how I got my current powers in Hell. You probably noticed my use of blood magic and how red voodoo symbols hover in the air whenever I use my powers. Not to mention me having control over voodoo imps, dolls, and shadow spirits. I am quite powerful, but I can’t use too much at once…it can be very taxing to use dark magic. But that deal was well worth it and now I make deals with other demons around at times. It’s how I got Husk and Niffty on my side…I summon them and they have no choice but to assist me!”

References:

Radford, Benjamin, (2013). “Voodoo: Facts About Misunderstood Religion” LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/40803-voodoo-facts.html

https://www.white-magic-help.net/About_White_Magic/Voodoo_History_Basic_Principles_Background.html

https://www.learnreligions.com/voodoo-gods-4771674

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Cannibalism (Page 65)

“Along with deer meat, jambalaya and many other kinds of food, I also have a rare fondness for eating humans and demons. You’re probably thinking: ‘Oh god, how gross and horrible! Who in their right mind would eat their own kind?’

Apparently, there are some tribes and a few cultures in the world that still engage in the practice. Not to mention several killers throughout the years. There are many kinds of animals such as the cane toad and redneck spider, who eat their own kind. Human ancestors have engaged in the act for survival, or ritual purposes. And in Hell, it’s as common as getting into fights with other demons.

In early history of human species, human and Neanderthals coexisted together, interbred, ate together and sometimes ate each other. Homo antecessor, the last common ancestor between Neanderthals and modern humans would often eat rival group members. Early humans in Europe practiced ritual cannibalism.

Around the 12th century, human remains were incorporated into medical practices for remedies. “Corpse medicine” remained in use until the late 18th century. The Aztec and the Inca engaged in cannibalism as part of a sacrificial religious rite. In Germany, some executioners would sell leftover body parts as medicine. Human fat was sold as a remedy for arthritis and broken bones. Apothecaries stored fat, flesh and bone…and let’s not forget that some people eat their own placentas in modern times.

The word “cannibalism” comes from the name that the Spanish gave to the Caribs/Canibales. The Caribs were engaged in anti-colonial battles with European powers…claiming they were cannibals may have been a fear propaganda tactic by the Spanish.

In Montaigne’s late 1500s essay “Of Cannibals,” shows an anthropological record of the Tupi people in what is now Brazil. They would taunt their captives by “entertain[ing] them with threats of their own death.”

In early America, while some Native American tribes practiced cannibalism, some colonists had to resort to it, such as the Jamestown colony in 1610.

But the public commonly associates cannibalism with the Donner-Party, groups of people that were snowbound in the Sierra Mountains in 1846-47.

Famine in the USS in the 1920s and 30s took millions of lives and forced survivors to turn to cannibalism, an event known as the Great Chinese Famine.

In modern times, cannibalism is still an acceptable practice in some tribes in New Guinea, like the Korowai tribe. Until the 1950s, the Fore people ate the bodies of relatives as they believed it would cleanse their spirits.

Also, do not try self-cannibalism…you will die and I will find it hilarious. In fact, eating humans is considered taboo nearly everywhere because eating humans can make you sick. This is especially true if you eat the brain. Eating the brain can cause kuru, a brain disease similar to mad cow disease. Like any kind of meat, human meat much be properly cooked and prepared. But as I’m an undead demon, I can eat myself and others no problem. I don’t really know how I managed to survive when I ate my victims more often when I was human.

There are tons of ways to prepare humans and demons and I have used them all:

Baking in the oven

Grilling

Frying in a pan

Steaming in a pot

Barbeque

Cooking over a fire pit

Chopping them on a board and eating raw pieces

Swallowing whole

References:

Edwards, Phil. (2015) “& Surprising Facts About Cannibalism” Vox. https://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8052239/cannibalism-surprising-facts

Talal Al-Khatib (May 13, 2015) “Cannibalism: A History of People Who Eat People.” Seeker. https://www.seeker.com/cannibalism-a-history-of-people-who-eat-people-1769840684.html

(Using a website with Vox’s name on it…life is a big slap in the face.)

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Radio Broadcasting (Page 5)

“Many folks call me the Radio Demon for good reason. One of my signature skills is the ability to broadcast what goes on around me anytime, anywhere. I’ve always loved being on center stage…I was a bit of a theater nut back in primary school. Fun fact: My shadow and I can travel through radios and produce static in the outside world in Hell.

One of the neat things about being a radio host is you can spread news to anyone in different places in the world…and no one even has to see you. In my human life, it provided me with a stable career and something to occupy my mind. My favorite things to talk about were dad jokes, cooking food, singing songs, and of course, murders that had happened. My broadcasts had to go underground when my descriptions of murders became graphic, both when I did them and when other killings were reported on the news.

My career wasn’t easy to start off with…it was quite a competitive business and I was lucky to start off as a janitor and radio repair man for a few years. My dad thought it was a worthless job but my mother supported me all the way. I slowly moved up the ladder, learning more techniques as I went along. Soon, I decided I would start my own show…become self-employed. My career really reached its peak during World War One and the start of the Roaring Twenties. I could describe all the casualties of the war to the public, talk about my own victims to my followers, all while ending with “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile,” my favorite song! I felt like I was on top of the world…not even my dad nor the ignorant folk could stop me. Like many people during the age of jazz and splendor, I basked in riches, ate good food and drinks…had tons of ladies at my feet. They were good friends, and even better victims! I was never interested in sex and romance…too many messy emotions. I didn’t want to be touched and nor down by anybody. (Thanks a lot, father.)

All this was before the police found me, my show was canceled, and my beloved radios destroyed by those seeking revenge. I smiled, I fell from grace, and I died during the Great Depression. Life really does have a twisted sense of humor.”

Experimental radio broadcasting began at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, 1910 with a program made by Lee De Forest. The WWJ Detroit station is considered the first radio station in the U.S. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) presented the first national broadcast in 1926, when I was in my late twenties. From 1925 to 1950, radios were a major source of family entertainment, where people could listen to music, stories, and the news. The success of NBC brought the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) into creation by William Paley.

Some radio stations transmit radio signals using amplitude modulation, which became the term for AM radio. AM broadcasts can be received at long distances, but the signals and sound are affected by static. In contrast, other stations transmit signals using frequency modulation, hence the initial FM. FM waves reproduce sound better.

I died in 1933 when radio was popular. But my rival, Vox (name means Voice in Latin) died in the 1950s, when television was becoming popular. He hosted his own program and did picture shows seemingly all the time. I remember him: tall, white skinned, slick short dark hair, eyes the color of dull metal. He advertised drugs, phones, cars, and a whole bunch of things…he enjoyed money a lot. Anything new he liked, new toys, new tech, new girls, then when they didn’t work, he’d replace them. Made me sick.

In Hell, I confronted him once and told him he was a big showoff. I was quite mad that picture shows took over radio…he even called me an outdated geek with a voice of static! He had this stupid robotic voice that I couldn’t take seriously. When he shot me in the head from behind, I had enough. I held him in place with black tentacles, figuring out how he died. Then I heard someone mention his death…

So…with a loud crash, a large TV appeared out of nowhere and crushed his stupid face. I was doubling over with laughter as I left, he picked himself up and yelled, his screen face all cracked.

So, what should you do in Hell? Listen to the radio, of course! Picture shows are fun as well, but even they can’t beat the classic radio. I know you techno folk flock to TV’s and computers thanks to Vox…both are annoying in my opinion. But radios are a great source of entertainment, especially when I’m on the air. My show starts at 6AM and 6PM every other day at 66.6FM. You can find radios in a whole bunch of stores and at the Hazbin Hotel…and if you’re brave, you can find cursed ones at the Black Market (all owned by me of course). If any demon gives you trouble, you can turn the dials a bit and the radio will either crush them or suck them inside. But be careful…listening for too long may cause you to sing, dance, experience your fears, and stab anyone within six feet of you. I have plenty of radios in my lair in the shadow world beneath Hell, but you’ll never be able to go there. But just say the word and I’ll gladly store your remains in my icebox.”

References:

“Broadcasting: The History of Radio” https://law.jrank.org/pages/4873/Broadcasting-History-Radio.html

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Sewing Voodoo Dolls (Page 38)

“I have made tons of voodoo dolls both as a human and in Hell. I have my own collection of ones that resemble Charlie, Vaggie, Husk, Niffty and many others. Niffty helps me sometimes after she helps make me more clothes. Don’t tell anyone this, but I secretly snuggle with a doll I made to resemble my mother. She briefly went to Hell in the form of a powerful voodoo deer, but went up to Heaven before I got a chance to see her. It’s been decades.”

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Jazz (Page 72)

“Music has always held a special place in my heart. Growing up in New Orleans, I was surrounded by jazz, live music, and theater. Playing instruments, singing, dancing, and performing were not just fun pastimes. Doing these hobbies also helped during certain times. Take the Great Depression or the Roaring Twenties or my way to bask in the spotlight as examples. I can play lots of instruments: piano, saxophone, trumpet, violin and furby organ. If you don’t know what that is, it’s an organ made from furry robotic toys made by this “LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER” human.”

According to the National Park Service et al., the early development of jazz (1895) is associated with Charles “Buddy” Bolden, a popular bandleader. Throughout the 19th century, diverse ethnical groups cumulated their cultures and styles together, creating an evolution in music. Musicians of diverse backgrounds were united by their common love of music.

One of my role models was real life Edward “Kid” Ory, a guy who lead his own band at age 14 and entertained dancers. He was the son of a White Frenchman and a Creole Woman of Afro-Spanish and Native American heritage, pretty much like me. I’m surprised we aren’t related. During my human life, I played in bands at Economy Hall, a dance hall that provided social services such as brass band dances for the Black Community. Many well-known jazz stars included real life Louis Armstrong, Joe Oliver, Johnny and Warren Dodds etc. During the Jazz Age in the 1920s, I was quite busy indeed with radio broadcasting career, playing jazz, performing at clubs and killing people on the side in the name of Kalfu and Satan. Music helped me get through the loss of my mother’s death via the Spanish Flu. I did also get my revenge on my father and uncle but that’s a story for another time.”

References:

National Park Service. (2015) A New Orleans Jazz History https://www.nps.gov/jazz/learn/historyculture/jazz_history.htm

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about the Exterminations (Page 665)

“The annual Exterminations sure are fun to watch! It’s the one day out of the year where the dark angels travel from Heaven and into Hell to purge the citizens at random. This is done to reduce the abnormally high population down here. During the 24 hours, I relax in the safety of my lair, occasionally going up to watch the slaughters from inside a building, Niffty and Husk by my side. I broadcast what goes on so other demons can have their share of entertainment. Not only am I in a safe place, but anytime the Exterminators try and surround me, I just tear them to pieces, throw them into portals or just scare them off by staring at them. There is a collection of horned Exterminator heads I have for decoration along my mantle and near the stuffed deer heads on display. Their sinister smiles and Xs over their right eyes adds to the place. Niffty sometimes comes down to my lair to help spruce it up and even when she leaves, a strong spell ensures that she will never tell anyone about its location.”

Someday when I rule Hell, the Exterminators will be the ones who are exterminated. Exterminators carry spears, swords, and harpoons which can kill any demon instantly. So I always try to be careful. I know that some demons can sell them on the black market so they can kill their enemies. I have several of them in a safe to use in emergencies.

What should you do in an Extermination? Stock up and lock up, if you’re smart. Make sure you have plenty of food, drinks and things to keep you entertained during the 24 hours. And be sure to get the stuff early unless you want to fight a dozen sinners for groceries. Exterminators fly in the open, so barricade yourself in a building with few windows and openings. If you’re unlucky enough to be out in the open, run for your life and say your prayers! You will know when it starts by the sounds of air raid sirens. When it is over, Charlie will go out to her balcony and shoot fireworks in the sky, signaling that it’s safe to go out. Feel free to fight for territory, sing, grab a drink or feast on the deceased…but get in my way and you’ll regret it.”

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Taking Over Territory (Page 187)

“When I first came to Hell, I was filled with bloodlust and dark power. Excited to be granted a new form by the shadow spirits, Satan and the Loas, I took full advantage. I toppled overlords who had ruled for centuries, and I broadcast my carnage and victories. I defeated that snake lord guy and grew my supernatural army. Many of the previous overlords didn’t have much magical power or they were easily fooled by my speeches and schemes.

But I knew that just having shadows at my beck and call weren’t enough. I needed corporeal demons to do my deeds as well. Thus I made deals with Husk, Niffty, and several others. Niffty admired me and my powers the moment I summoned her from the flames of the burning lake and into a fireplace at the hotel. She was happy to be free from the fires. My appearance and charming nature had her blushing and flustered. I told her she can do the things she enjoys: cooking, cleaning, sewing, reading and writing. Husk was more reluctant to serve me but I bribed him with money and booze… promising him “wealth and true love.” Both are beneficial: Niffty is quick on her feet and Husk is strong and good at gambling. Oh, it sure is fun to mess around with them.

Additionally, I spend time with my dear friend and performer Mimzy and Rosie, a fellow overlord. All three of us are pretty close. The demons know that I’ve conquered a territory by the presence of tall radio towers nearby. Or whenever some demons go to a certain area, they encounter some voodoo creatures and shadows who warn them to stay away.”

How do you take over territory? Choose your battles well. Don’t rush into a fight thinking you can win. Gather allies or if you’re powerful enough, just rely on yourself. The time right after the Extermination is the ideal time to claim land since many demons have perished. It’s also when many other demons fight over different areas. It’s fun to hear about it on the picture shows, especially when I’m mentioned.”

Here’s what “The Radio Demon’s Guide to the Inferno” has to say about Asexuality (Page 221)

“Some of you may or may not know this, but I’m asexual and aromantic. I’m not interested in sex nor romantic relationships with either men or women. Many of you fans have shipped me with Charlie and Angel and pretty much every other demon in Hell. Tell me mortals…why in the nine circles would I ever be into my rival Vox, or a pathetic loner scientist…or Hell forbid, Lucifer? Charlie is a lovely lady and a good friend, but if she’s no use to me for my plans in the long run, then she’s not worth it. And Angel…he’s alright, if not annoying and clingy. He invades my personal space and I certainly do not want to know what goes on in his perverted head. I’d rather get shot a dozen times than allow Angel to lay his hands on me (who knows where they’ve been). I don’t really love anyone, save for myself and my mama. It’s just the way I am.

In my time, sexuality terms did not exist. Anyone with an abnormal obsession with the opposite sex was called heterosexual. And homosexual was a derogatory term for those who were outside the norm in regards to sexuality. It was bad enough that my father and uncle chided me for not being into girls and sex like a “real man” should. The thought of merging my body with someone else’s was gross. I invade personal space, but I feel repulsed when other’s touch me…it’s like I’m not in control in the situation. Plus, even if I wanted to have sex, there’s no point as sinners can’t reproduce down here. And I don’t like to be tied down…having to accommodate my needs for someone. Aside from dancing, having the occasional dinner with someone nice, there are better things to do in my time than typical romantic antics. I learned very early on in my life that the only person I could really trust was myself…Alastor. It wasn’t hard to put up a charming exterior to make many women fall for me…including my dear friend Mimzy. The other women and men who stayed around for a while got tied up in my basement and screamed as I stabbed them and split their throats. Hey, you never know who will come into your life.”

Asexuality is defined as a lack of sexual attraction. Asexuals are not sexually attracted to anyone. Those who are aromantic are not romantically attracted to anyone. However, like sexual individuals, asexuals are different and have their own needs and levels of comfort. Some asexuals might be romantically attracted to males, females, or both. Others might desire intimacy and many are in relationships with asexuals and sexual individuals. Sadly, many asexuals feel broken and out of place due to cultural portrayals of sexuality in the media and other institutions.

References:

https://lgbt.williams.edu/homepage/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-asexuality/

Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. https://www.asexuality.org/

#hazbinhotel #alastor #the radio demon #radiodemon

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michaelgogins · 5 years

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Collective and Historical Guilt

The New York Times is currently printing a series of stories on the history and influence of Negro slavery in the British colonies and the United States, called the 1619 Project.

This series has caused me to re-think and to clarify some ideas that I have long had about sin, in particular what Christian theology calls “original sin.” I am not a Christian and I do not believe that all human beings inherit sin from birth. Nevertheless, I have been deeply influenced by Christianity and by Christian ideas about sin, which I find quite profound. I have been particularly influenced by Jonathan Edwards and Immanuel Kant. In my view, Edwards’ remarks on the historical evidence for original sin have great power.

My own ideas on this topic go back to an interest in American history and to my awareness that the United States is conquered land, from which the natives were in effect exterminated or expelled, and into which a hereditary caste of slaves was imported from Africa. My parents were liberals, and from them I learned as a teenager that American history is not taught in any realistic or scientific sense. It is acknowledged, and then hastily passed by or, if you will, skated over.

I’ve always felt that American history has created a kind of collective historical guilt in the American people, something which most conservatives, ironically enough most of them “Christians” of some sort, would heatedly deny. Thanks to the Times, I have identified a possible mechanism for this guilt.

This mechanism is both cultural and economic. But the ultimate basis is economic. First the colonies, and then the United States, made a lot of money from slavery, which thus became entrenched both economically and politically. To be born as a child into this system does not create in one any sort of original guilt. But, as an adult, to become complicit in it, certainly does create guilt.

Complicity in this sense is complex. But, since other human beings are visibly suffering, one will become complicit simply by “going along.” By conforming to the norms of a corrupt society.

As in all systems of evil, this complicity is actively inculcated and encouraged. Theologically, guilt has no power over the innocent. It only has power over the guilty. Therefore, all evil systems seek to make their members guilty of something so that they can be the more easily manipulated. Through this mechanism, guilt is parasitic on the goodness of Creation and, in particular, on the power of the human conscience.

In the United States, the complicity of our ancestors for the dispossession of the natives and the enslavement of the African-Americans became institutionalized in many ways, some of them clearly delineated in the Times’ series.

It is terribly important to realize that this complicity continues to determine the character and fate of the United States. In the first place, the caste system of first slavery, then Jim Crow, then de facto racial segregation continues to this day thanks to the guilty assent to a superior status from being white. This is the contemporary form of the collective guilt arising from complicity in slavery before the Civil War.

Guilt in any form is never passive. It is always active. It moves one, either to seek redemption, or to seek the community of the guilty, that is, to spread the guilt further. To actually escape from guilt requires explicit, conscious acknowledgement of guilt, restitution for wrongs done, and commitment to a change of ways. And all this requires, in turn, in some form, the acceptance of divine grace.

The United States began to escape from the guilt of slavery during the Civil Rights movement, but that movement stalled in the suburbs. The complicity entrenched there, fueled by resentment and a partly justified perception of “loss of place” by all classes below the upper middle class, is currently destroying the United States, potentially in a more thorough manner than the Civil War could do.

President Trump, in my view, is not the root cause of this catastrophe, although he is, by spreading complicity through the cultivation of resentment and voter suppression, most certainly its facilitator.

Some candidates for the Presidency are advocating some form of restitution to African-Americans. I think the exact form this takes could easily be wrong, but the good sense behind this sentiment is clear. I even wonder if a more public acknowledgment of collective guilt and some concrete actions of restitution might be necessary before enough people turn out to vote the Republican Party in its current form out of power.

#theology #history #politics #philosophy #United States

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beinformedlivetransformed-blog · 5 years

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How it got growing

I was originally going to call this post "How it got started" but the truth is, I started thinking about my necessary responsibility towards the world/creation after watching a film on Netflix: Okja. (Although, sadly, it really should have started when I came to understand for the first time that there is a designer behind the world, God, the Creator, and I am made in His image for a purpose - more on that later though.) Yes, it is fictional, and even fantastical, but the film drew its inspiration and data from real life practices. The film asks a serious question: can we justify animal welfare practices as 'ethical' just because they leave a small ecological footprint? Anyway, long story short, I decided to cut out meat from my diet. You can read my summarised version of when I first needed to think through my response here. As an evangelical Christian, perhaps in my naivety, I was somewhat surprised by the response of some evangelical Christians around me. I was judged as being theologically 'weak' (I even had a friend open the Bible with me to 1 Corinthians 8 and explain to me that it doesn't matter how our meat is killed or where it comes from...to which I responded, as gently as I could, that the same writer writes what he does in Romans 14...and also the/my issue was not with eating meat but with the welfare of animals in the meat industry, which involves completely different theological considerations, namely understanding God as the Creator) or, I was judged as being "one of those vegans" (a very sad stereotyping of individuals into a singular political movement). At first, I felt anger and disbelief: how can you not feel that this is wrong? How can you think it’s fine? I wanted to convince people to do what I do. But God was nudging my conscience: I needed to make sure I didn't let pride dictate how I responded to these brothers and sisters of mine. It was not right to tell them to live exactly like me (God made us each individually unique so we would express Him as His children in different ways, according to how He has made us and where He has placed us), or think that they were less than me because they didn't feel and think as I did - as if I know the best way to live. After all, I am also waiting for God (I am not the Saviour) to restore everything and make it as He intended. I am living in light of that hope, even as I mourn now (and increasingly, as I learn of more that is wrong with the world) at the brokenness of everyone to everyone and everything. But it did start my questioning and thinking: why don't evangelical Christians have a strong theology and clear ethic and lifestyle of creation care rising out of God as Creator? (Also to be discussed in a later post.) Why should it surprise evangelicals that a natural expression of that could be vegetarianism? It is almost like there isn't a place or framework for thinking about such a thing, let alone do such a thing. (I have since learned that this is not true, but this is what I felt at the time.) I am growing in conviction more and more that being a child of God is about living out/bearing His image in His world, bringing redemption on all levels, by His power. This is what I am redeemed for. This is what I am destined for. And this is why Jesus came. Yes, to bring me reconciliation with God (through his death on the cross - bringing justice from judgment, freedom from guilt and slavery to sin, honour from shame, freedom and power from fear and powerlessness) but this begins the process of reconciliation to self, others and the world. Mike Koheen drives home this point, and more, brilliantly:

If redemption is the restoration of the whole of creation, then our mission is to embody the good news: every part of creational life is being restored. The good news will be evident in our care for the environment...If redemption were merely about an otherworldly salvation then our mission would be reduced to the sort of evangelism that tries to get people into heaven. We would be forced to surrender most of God’s creation to the evil powers that claim it for their own...

That was back in 2017. God has shown me many other ways since then of how creation care is an essential part of my growing discipleship, my growing to become what I am: child of God, redeemed image bearer. It is intertwined deeply with loving God and loving neighbour in so many different ways.

My minister recently gave me a book titled "Coming Home" (a thoughtful title!) by an Australian Christian and political economist who has practically lived out the things he discusses in personal and professional ways. It looks at, what the author considers, seven key areas of discipleship when it comes to ecology and economics, where the home is the central place for getting started and growing*:

#hospitality: opening our homes

#workandleisure: Sabbath-centred living

#consumption: a right relationship to things

#sustainability: an earth care-full way of life

#giving: living with an open hand

#savingsandinvestment: the building up of one another

#debt: freedom to follow God

I cannot recommend this book to you enough. It is theologically sharp and deeply thoughtful, culturally relevant, and incredibly practical. In fact, each chapter is structured around these three questions: What’s the problem? What does the Bible say? What should we do?

My husband and I read this book together and resolved to take up new habits in each of the areas every six months, ensuring we continue to grow in this area of discipleship in an everyday way, that is, in our home and lifestyle. We want to share our journey of growing in thinking about, understanding and appreciating God's creation and our cultural mandate towards creation care, and how we're practically doing it in our little corner of the world. It is by no means prescriptive! It is going to be an account of our honest and humble reflections and actions. We hope it encourages you and gives you food for thought and action in whatever way God might be bringing new convictions to you about what your discipleship looks like in light of the cross and looking forward to the full restoration of His world. We hope that you would be willing to share with us your thoughts along the way - iron sharpens iron.

*Author Jonathan Cornford says “home economics is central to the reconciling of economics and ecology that lies at the heart of humanity’s great challenge in the 21st century...I have come to the conclusion that reclaiming a Christ-centred practice of home economics is central to our own spiritual health and to our witness in the world. The Greek word for ‘house’, oikos, is the root word from which we get economics (oikonomia), ecology (oikologia) and ecumenical (oikumene). Economics describes the management and ordering of the work, consumption and finances of a household...Ecology describes our attempts to understand the great household of nature and, in particular, to understand the interdependent relationships that support the functioning of that household. We have tended to think of economics and ecology as two separate spheres, when in fact the human economy exists entirely within the great household of nature and still depends entirely upon it, even if modern urban life gives us the illusion that we are somehow independent of nature. Ecumenism describes the movement towards unity within the household of God, usually referred to as ‘the church’. It is based on the recognition that belonging to Christ draws us so deeply into relationship with others that we are members of a single body. Generally, this last ‘household’, the church, is seen as having little to do with the other two. Moreover, in practice, the church even tends to have little to do with the ways in which its members run their homes. However, if we accept, as the Apostle Paul tells us, that faith in Christ requires presenting our ‘bodies as living sacrifices’ - that is, conforming our day-to-day bodily and material existence to the way of Jesus - then we must understand our individual households as not only the base of our participation in economy and ecology, but also the core site in which we enact or deny our membership in the household of faith in the hundreds of choices we make every day. What’s more, if we understand the household of faith as merely the first-fruits of the great reconciliation that God intends for the whole created order, but is yet to be accomplished, then a fuller understanding of the household of God should expand to encompass the whole household of nature, the human economy that exists within that and our own individual households within that.”

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alexsmitposts · 5 years

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Without the I Word, Beware B and P As Nancy Pelosi struggles to contain increasing demands for the Congress to impeach President Trump, his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo ratchets up tensions in the Gulf of Oman, as it has done in countless other historical circumstances, making war with Iran look imminent. Now more than ever, Americans need to know that beyond oil, the Middle East, like the rest of the world, is divided between right and left. Iran is the leader of the left-oriented Shia version of Islam, while Saudi Arabia leads the right oriented Arab world. Meanwhile, Israel, as it continues to occupy Palestinian territory for over seventy years, has gone from being a left-oriented society in which the kibbutz played a central role, so far to the right that it often agrees with fascists. Across the Middle East as elsewhere,“Follow the money”, corresponds to the left-right divide. Unlike American ignorance of current foreign affairs, few people across the world have a false idea of the French Revolution of 1789: driven by popular hardship, the sans culottes got rid of a monarch, opening the way for an organized left that carried out the Russian Revolution of 1917, followed, in due course, by the Chinese Revolution of 1949. These three revolutions duly claimed their place in history and in the popular imagination, however, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the US installed ‘liberal’ parties in Western Europe, Eastern Europe modernized under a Soviet controlled authoritarian form of social democracy, while Iran was still a relatively poor country whose population was in need of everything from health care to education and housing. In 1953, when Iranians elected a lawyer named Mohammed Mossadegh to lead the country, the nationalization of their oil bonanza was a no-brainer. Alas, this coincided with the growing realization by the US of the crucial role of ‘black gold’, as American automobile ownership tripled, and petroleum became the magic fluid that generated prodigious development in the West. In what was to become a pattern, the CIA and M16 worked in tandem to overthrow the Iranian popular government and put the exiled Shah back in power. Twenty-six years later, in 1979, popular forces carried out a revolution against the Shah’s iron rule that has never been understood by the West, which saw the new leaders exclusively as religious fanatics. In reality, when Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France, he was accompanied by a socialist theoretician. Ali Shariati had been in and out of jail while teaching high school and campaigning for change. Eventually, he was allowed to accept a scholarship to France, where he studied with Islamic scholars, earning a PhD in sociology and the history of religions in 1964, while discovering the third world political theologist Frantz Fanon, collaborating with the Algerian National Liberation Front and campaigning alongside Jean-Paul Sartre for an end to French colonialism. Returning to Iran, Shariati founded the Freedom Movement of Iran, gathering followers throughout \society. His sin was to have revived Shiism’s revolutionary claim that a good society would embrace religious values. He taught that the role of a government under a learned clergy, was to guide society according to Islamic values rather than managing it, allowing human beings to reach their highest potential rather than encouraging the West’s hedonistic individualism. Believing that Shia Muslims should not await the return of a mysterious 12th Imam, (as the Jews await ‘the Messiah’) but hasten it by fighting for social justice, even to the point of martyrdom, Shariati criticized the Shah’s clerics and translated the claims of Iranian Marxists that revolution would bring about a just, classless society into religious symbols that ordinary people could relate to. Seeing a direct link between liberal democracy and the plundering of pre-modern societies based on spirituality, unlike Fanon, he believed that people could only fight imperialism by recovering their cultural identity, including their religious beliefs, which he called ‘returning to ourselves’. (Like a growing number of contemporary leaders — such as Vladimir Putin — Shariati called religious government ‘commitment democracy’, as opposed to Western demagogy based on advertising and money. The panic that gripped the West in 1979 when 52 American diplomats were locked-into the Embassy for 444 days, was heightened by Israel’s victory in the Six Day War a few years earlier. Since that time, while continuing to deny the Palestinians a state of their own, Israel has moved closer to the most powerful Sunni (i.e., conservative) Arab nation, Saudi Arabia, which supports ISIS and its offshoot terrorist organizations worldwide, and wages an unrelenting campaign against the tiny country of Yemen, whose revolutionary Houthis are also supported by Iran, in the millennial battle between Sunni and Shia. Few Americans know that these two are strongly correlated to the left-right divide. Western media correctly attributes the conflict to attitudes toward Ali, the Prophet’s designated successor, but it features Shiites lashing themselves with chains in solidarity, without mentioning that the reason for Ali’s murder was his defense of the lower classes. In turn, that attitude was based on a disagreement over whether God had attributes, such as ‘justice’ and hence could demand that humans treat each other with respect and dignity. Arising after the Prophet’s death, the argument centered around whether the Quran was an emanation of God, or had always existed. In turn, the answer to that question depended on whether God simply ‘is’ or whether, like humans, he has attributes, one of which would be ‘justice’, or solidarity, which would imply the existence of free will. At one point, a free will defender who got up and left the discussion was labelled a Mutazilla, or ‘one who has left’. During the following centuries, and mainly under the Abbasid rulers centered in Persia, the Mutazilla movement lead to the development of Shia Islam, with a different set of laws from those of the Sunnis, who still believe that individual lives are foreordained by a God who is neither ‘good’ nor ‘evil’, but simply ‘is’, and that men must obey Him without question. Under the cleric Wahhab, that conviction led to the extreme of Sunni Islam, in whose name terrorism is carried out to this day. The notion of a ‘Shia arc’ suggests an equally threatening military entity, when in reality it is an ideological one. Although nothing could be further from the minds of those who hold Trump’s foreign policy in their hands, Ali Shariati and the Iranian revolution revived Shia Islam’s original message that men must treat each other with dignity and respect. The original seat of the Mutazilla movement was the city of Basra, located on the Persian Gulf Shat al Arab waterway, and the Shiite learning center of Najaf, near the southern Iraq/Iran border, was the headquarters of Iran’s exiled revolutionary leader, Imam Khomeini. After spreading from Iran to Iraq, Shia Islam reached Syria and Lebanon on the strength of its commitment to justice. In Syria, the life values of Islam had already led to the creation of the Baaʿth Party, which in 1953 merged with the Syrian Socialist Party to form the Saddam Hussein’s Arab Socialist Baaʿth (Renaissance) Party. Although both countries belonged to the non-aligned, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist movement, the merger failed. (The US suffered the Baath being the party of Saddam Hussein as long as he was waging an eight-year war against socialist Iran.) Syrian Shiism continues to be represented by the small Alawite sect headed by the Assad family. Reaching back to the ninth century, the Alawites, who pray sitting rather than prostrate, and celebrate some Christian holidays, had been rejected by the Shiite hierarchy until Assad’s father, Hafez al Assad, came to power in 1964. Though accused by the US of “killing its own citizens”, Assad’s son, Bashar, heads the only secular government in the Middle East (including Israel), and retains the educational system and Western social customs that prevailed under the French mandate (1923-1964). In neighboring Lebanon, the Shiite militia known as Hezbollah represents a powerful political force in a tiny nation whose population is divided among half a dozen religions and sects, including the Christian Druze and Maronites. The picture painted for Westerners is of a rabble acting on orders from Iran, while Hezbollah is allied with the Shia militia Hamas in the struggle for an independent Palestine, making Syria ‘the frontline state’. (Alastair Crooke’s book Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, attributes Hezbollah’s victories over the Israeli army to ‘horizontal’ organization, which encourages a high level of individual initiative, and is part of the surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of Western political thought by its leader Hassan Nasrallah.) This makes the fact that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” all the more ironic. America is the only modern nation whose citizens have almost automatic access to guns, resulting in thousands of murders every year, while its leaders insist that foreign national militias must be punished by a so-called ‘rules-based’ international community. Last but not least, in this saga, like the cherry on the cake, the American public is oblivious to the decades-long ties between Iran and its neighbor, Russia, based on both a shared revolutionary commitment to ‘dignity and respect’, and to religious values. It is disquieting, to say the last, that when the two B’s threaten Iran, they are threatening Russia outside the narrative familiar to American voters.

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confrontingbabble-on · 6 years

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“Some of the world’s largest religions emerged during the Iron Age, and the rules in their sacred texts likely helped families and communities (or at least some subset) to thrive under Iron Age conditions. Today, we live under very different conditions. We know things our ancestors didn’t. We hold powers and face challenges they could not have imagined.

Here are a few of the moral mandates from the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) that some people still practice on religious grounds but that a growing number of others consider morally dubious given our current circumstances and knowledge.

Hitting children—The Hebrew Bible instructs parents to beat their children, most explicitly in Proverbs 23: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death.” Traditional Muslim teachings exhort parents to beat boys if they don’t pray regularly by the age of seven.

Research in psychology contradicts this advice, pointing to few if any developmental benefits and an increased risk of aggression in children who are hit. Parenting experts suggest better means of raising children and managing misbehavior. Even religious leaders who may feel obliged to approve spanking because it is endorsed in their sacred texts (some of whom fiercely defend the god-given right of parents to hit their kids) now tend to send mixed messages and encourage other forms of discipline first.

Teaching children to rely on faith— Religions often treat faith or even religious certitude as a virtue. In fact, in Protestant Christianity it is the ultimate virtue, the one that sends people to heaven or hell. Believe and be saved, says the Christian New Testament, and one of the tenets of the Reformation was sola fide—by faith alone. Defenders of Christianity may marshal logic or evidence to support belief, but when backed into a corner, many default to I just know—and they teach children to do the same.

By contrast, modern cognitive science recognizes the sense of knowing as a feeling state that can be triggered under a wide variety of circumstances, not all of which have a basis in reality. Advocates for secularism argue that faith, by definition, means committing to a set of beliefs that are poorly grounded—or even contradict the best available evidence. We humans are prone to confirmation bias, for example, or self-serving “motivated” reasoning.

In belief-based religions like Christianity and Islam, doubt is seen as a sign of weakness or a moral failing, a sin. But knowing what we now know about human cognition, faith increasingly looks like a bad epistemology, a not-very-effective way of sifting what is real from what is not. By contrast, the scientific method has been called “What we know about how not to fool ourselves,” because it forces us to ask the questions that could show us wrong. Unlike faith in received dogma, the scientific method promotes a growth mindset. This is one reason that a growing number of people see religious indoctrination of children as an abuse of trust.

Restrictions on women’s movement and attire – Religious modesty and virginity rules for women emerged when a person’s place in society depended on paternal lineage. Women and men had no way of managing their fertility other than abstinence; and mama’s baby, papa’s maybe could create social havoc. Societies had a strong investment in controlling female fertility.

Modernity values people based on who they are, not on their lineage; and women now have reliable means to manage their fertility. Our life course need not be defined by the form of our genitalia. But male ownership of girls and women is so foundational in the Abrahamic traditions that conservative believers often find themselves most comfortable with gender hierarchy. Conservative Christians promote “male headship”—a version of separate-but-equal; conservative Muslims rationalize veiling—which (though it can mean different things to different believers) is rooted in male ownership of female sexuality; Orthodox Jews demand that women shave their heads and ride on separate sides of the bus.

Fortunately, although religions may slow cultural evolution, they rarely succeed in stopping it altogether. Even within conservative religious communities, leaders often claim that restrictive practices elevate women and offer them genuine equality. Their thinking may be Orwellian, but it is a far cry from that of the men who wrote the sacred texts, for whom male dominance and control of females was simply a given.

Pronatalism – “Be fruitful and multiply,” God tells man in the book of Genesis. Throughout the Bible, sons are seen as signs of God’s favor, the more the better. In the Christian New Testament book of 1 Timothy, readers are told that women, who brought sin into the world, will be saved by childbearing (2:15). The Roman Catholic Church, when it emerged, promoted a high birthrate—not among priests, which would have been a drain on church assets—but among lay practitioners, which added to the ranks of the faithful.

Today some devout Catholics and quiver-full Protestants (along with ultra-orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Muslims) still see bearing many children as a form of righteous submission to God’s will. They eschew family planning, taking a “let go and let God” approach to birth control. But as world population approaches eight billion, putting increasing pressure on natural resources and other species, many people now view large families the same way they might view gluttony. Most, including most religious believers, think it is more moral to take excellent care of a few children than to produce as many as possible.

Proselytizing mandates – Christianity tells believers to “make disciples of every creature,” and over the centuries Christians have sent missionaries to the far reaches of the planet, some willing to kill or die in order to win a “harvest” of converts. They have been celebrated as saints and martyrs, or in modern times as altruistic heroes. But many people now see cross-cultural proselytizing as a form of imperialism that disrespects the complexity of indigenous and foreign cultures.

To make matters more morally dubious, missionaries often leverage their superior access to information and wealth—enticing conversion by bundling evangelism with desperately-needed food, medical care, education or crisis services. To a missionary who sees the threat of hell as the ultimate risk and the promise of heaven as the ultimate good, the ends may justify the means; but outsiders see exploitation of power differentials, which most ethical codes discourage. Some countries now limit or constrain missionary activities to protect vulnerable communities and people.

Kosher slaughter rules – In the Torah, God commands that animals be slaughtered according to religious rules, and over time Jewish scholars fleshed these out. The animal is to have its throat slit with a very sharp knife that has no defects. It must be conscious at the time of the cut and must die from blood loss. These rules may have originally had health value for humans or animal welfare value for livestock, but with the availability of modern stunning, they have become controversial. Stunning animals immediately before slaughter can reduce suffering. Many Muslims think that Halal slaughter rules similarly prohibit stunning, but there is disagreement among Muslim scholars about this. Some animal welfare watchdog groups in Europe and the U.S. have advocated the banning of Kosher and Halal slaughter, while others are working to improve the practices in ways that reduce fear or suffering before and during slaughter.

Capital punishment – The human history of killing offenders goes back almost to the beginnings of written history. Death by axe, death by being thrown into a quagmire, death by beheading (which is where we get the term capital punishment), by boiling, by stoning . . . Over the millennia, all manner of death has been meted out for all manner of offences. The Hebrew Bible prescribes death for almost 30 transgressions ranging from murder and kidnapping to blasphemy and sassing, and the Quran is similarly enthusiastic about execution. (You can compare both texts here, or find out here if you deserve death according to the Bible.) Building on the Abrahamic tradition of blood atonement, the central premise of New Testament Christianity is structured around the idea that punishment by death can set things right.

For two hundred years, opponents of the death penalty have worked to reduce the number of capital offenses and the cruelty of execution methods or to advance philosophical and practical reasons for abolishing state-sanctioned killing altogether. Some of this opposition has been lead by devoutly religious people, and it has shifted thinking in a wide variety of cultures. Over 100 countries have abolished the death penalty.

Intolerance of other religions – In order to recruit and retain members, religions often make exclusive truth claims and promise exclusive rewards. Many also threaten those who fail to join or who choose to leave with punishments in this life or the next. Islam’s prescription of death for apostates is just an extreme version of this broader dynamic.

Inquisitions and holy wars have been seen by past generations as righteous because they compelled people to live according to the one right law. Even short of bloodshed, religious teachings can be profoundly divisive. Calvinist Christianity teaches that human beings are “utterly depraved” and can be redeemed only by accepting the crucifixion of Jesus as a personally-transforming gift. Believers learn to mistrust others, who by definition lack any basis for morality.

But this one-way mentality doesn’t seem as righteous to many as it once did. Today, when faith is compelled through holy war and purges—as under the Taliban or ISIS–most people are morally appalled, and people increasingly see religious tolerance as a virtue rather than the vice our ancestors believed it to be.

– – – – –

Some people believe that the moral rules handed down by our ancestors came from a supernatural deity and should not be questioned or changed. The gods know best, and even if their rules may not entirely make sense, ours is not to question why. In the Evangelical community where I grew up, people sometimes tried to find practical explanations for biblical rules. But when that failed, “because the Bible says so” was reason enough.

By contrast, secular ethics teach that the timeless part of morality is not the rules themselves, nor the authority of the rule-giver, but rather an underlying principle. Morality, in this view, seeks to promote the wellbeing of sentient beings, especially human beings but also other animals. Actions that reduce suffering and harm or increase wellbeing are moral. To maximize wellbeing, rules have to change, because what promotes thriving in one situation may cause harm in another...”

https://valerietarico.com/2018/07/22/when-religious-teachings-become-immoral/

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.

#atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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queernuck · 6 years

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Psychoanalysis against Psychiatry

The act of apprehending a subject embodied with the psychoanalytic apparatus can certainly be violent, but the notion that psychoanalysis as tied to the psychiatric is an unbreakable relationship rather than one that has been developed on contingency, on ontology and archaeology as formative of a false past, of a false ideological figuration of the present and the body within it, the creation of a Freud outside himself, a sort of imagined, Phallic Freud, is part of what creates the space in which both critique and application of psychoanalysis as a methodology are collapsed into a singularity such that no meaningful discussion of either paradigm is possible.

The threat of the asylum, of the school as police center, the prison as a sort of developed asylum, the asylum as prison-like, the teaching of penance as a kind of secular representation of the religious forms a dynamic that Žižek points out as originating in Christian concepts of guilt and penance in a fashion that is unmistakable: guilt and sin in the West are their own sorts of behaviors beyond their realization in Christianity itself, but the extension of the Christian character to all within the West, the appropriation of other bodies into the body of Christ. When one looks at the popular conception of hell as ironic punishment, as the sort of hell that Dante describes, one sees part of this conceptualization of the body as mentally ill, as unfit: Dante describes sin, wrongdoing, aberration in a physical vocabulary, one that is met in turn with the soul of the sinner as a body of sorts, that is then tortured in an ironic embodiment of its sin. This in turn is part of Dante’s discussion of sin, in that sin represents a distortion of the body, violence against God and thus against the self in God’s image, a violence which is corrected by the ironic punishment: out of love, the sin is allowed to persist, but only in this ironic fashion. Similarly, there is no continuation of the schizophrenic, the new modalities of engagement and meaning-making it can represent as developed by Deleuze and Guattari in psychiatry. Rather, it must be faced with an opposite sort of impetus that does not merely dispel the delusion, but replaces it with one that properly aligns with standards of social behavior. Rather than a recognition of genuineness of experience, the way in which the genuine experience of schizophrenia is phenomenologically consistent, is shaped by the structure of cultural interpretation and the cultural influence of what sorts-of-experiences are categorized as “schizophrenic” it is in creating a certain assumed-dangerous body, a kind of resignification of the body into the demonic, the deformed, rather than the whole and holy, that the notion of “syndrome” and “disorder” are realized. The later appropriation of a figure like Joan of Arc, her recognition as a Saint despite being burnt at the stake, is one such exercise in this, in the way that structures of power create exactly what kinds of bodies can be dealt with in what ways, what sorts of violence require intervention, divine or not.

That therapists have such power, can decide exactly that which police intervention, medical violence, acts of alienation and control can be marked by, what point they must enter the life of the subject, is important. This creates the means by which the disparity between patient and doctor, therapist and subject becomes codified, becomes part of what makes nebulous goals of “recovery” so difficult, considering the means by which the creation of a record, a kind of body of the subject that is not physical but rather a simulacra, a notation of an absent patient, an imagined one, is realized through the lens of the psychiatric as a kind of violent interface between the patient and their therapist in a fashion that eliminates the possibility of collaboration. The therapist is pressured, at all times, to view the subject as dangerous, as potentially-dangerous, especially given the recent hyperfocus upon two means by which the body and its realization are controlled: the debate on gun control and the attempted tightening of laws around controlled substances for prescribers. Both of these require a certain view of the psychological subject that assumes their intentionality based upon an imagined condition, a kind of structured neurosis that is read upon the imagined body of the patient and thusly imposed upon it.

There are certainly therapists who are understanding, who are helpful, who offer consolation and counseling in tough situations. However, even these are not free from the structure of the asylum, its repetition in the prison, the school, the power of police, and that they stand on this ground, that they occupy a position within such arboreal structures of power means that even in attempting to offer care, they will repeat the same kinds of power surrounding them. There is not a means to offer an Anti-Oedipal therapy specifically because the development of the psychoanalytic within the psychiatric has created an Oedipal ontology, a sort of concept of Oedipus which unrelentingly leads to the eventual realization of Oedipal structures of trauma and traumatization in the patient’s experience. This is not to say that psychoanalysis itself is without the same problem of Oedipus: the entire focus of Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus is specifically the realization of the Oedipal trauma beyond psychoanalysis itself and in the wider range of relations that are described by and signified within the psychoanalytic, within similar vocabularies, and their continuation under capitalist apparatuses of control. The structure of the psychoanalytic is not in itself neutral, but that is in large part because it exists as a structure of relations, an arboreal one at that, within capitalist control. Simply by being formed within a series of relations that are intelligible to capitalist judgment, it resignifies certain capitalist modalities of understanding. This is not to say that psychoanalytic readings, psychoanalytic critique, psychoanalysis itself are not salvageable from capitalist violence. Marxist psychoanalysis is the basis for a great deal of postmodern feminist thought. However, acknowledging a capitalist genealogy is absolutely necessary to any actual critique of the following structure of psychoanalysis as part of the psychiatric. The psychiatric, as a development of the logos of psychology, the ontological holdings that psychology as a field is based off of, necessitates not only that previous structure, but its continuation as a capitalist field.

To return to earlier judgments, the use of the psychoanalytic within the psychological, one must discuss how “psychological” has become such a wide range of knowledges, so many of them violent, that it is inextricably linked to capitalist violence. Just as anthropology has been recognized as a colonial source of knowledge and meaning-making, the decolonization of anthropology being a venture that requires at least admitting that the current structure of the anthropological is based specifically in the anthropologist as a certain kind of subject, a subject that is foundationally that of a colonizer, of a kind of tabula rasa that records knowledges without subjectively interpreting them, without reintegrating them into the kinds of apparatuses of colonization that make a population intelligible in the first place. Decolonization of anthropology is a venture that has been conceived of only in the past few decades, and itself deals with a history of anthropology being at least nominally anti-colonial in many expressions over its history, such that even a young sort of critique is woven into the field at hand. While the optimism of similar presence in psychology, as a development of the psychoanalytic that reaches beyond philosophies of mind based in race, colonial division, the implied-phrenology of racial science and the creation of standards of eugenics, one must also realize that the very same structures are at hand in the history of psychology and its practice.

Discussing Autism, disability advocacy, and Hans Asperger is fraught for just this reason: the recognition of different “degrees” and a qualitatively different expression of autistic phenomenology, the sort of viewpoint implied by the presence of Asperger’s Syndrome as a diagnosis, is a step toward countering this violence, but considering that Asperger himself was describing these children as a means of describing children exempt from Aktion T4, as well as those suitable to be murdered under it, is absolutely necessary. The creation of standards of “high-functioning” Autism was specifically used in order to mark certain bodies as able to support the Nazi war machine, and which must be eliminated for it to retain its supposed-health, as part of a eugenicist course of action. The continued use of “high-functioning” as a label is one that takes a judgment that could be used in order to describe one sort of experience, an ability to meet standards of capitalist subjectivity, of acceptability, to point out how autistic experience interacts with a society that does a great deal to be openly hostile to autistic people, and has instead been reversed in order to mark autistic people as better or worse depending on their “functioning.” The phenomenological content of being “autistic” and becoming-autistic is in being diagnosed a certain way, having behaviors recognized as of-an-autistic-sort, and the diagnosis being imparted as a result. A psychoanalytic approach which uses structures and accounts of desire, interaction, subjects understanding themselves will certainly mention capitalist valuations of the subject, but not base its entire evaluation in them. Overwhelmingly, the psychological does.

When the United States conducts “PsyOps” in foreign nations (with new and euphemistically renamed units, mind you) as part of a larger war effort, it specifically recognizes the colonized as possible individuals, in a fashion that is not present in previous colonial courses of action. This is the turn toward the neocolonial, to a kind of hyperindividualization, where the First World can look to cases of suffering in the Third in individual, particularly evocative moments, but is unable to see how the larger structure of a divide between First and Third world is created through a kind of Oedipal concept of national relations, the Fatherland and the Motherland producing an orphaned child of sorts. The structure of “PsyOps” is found in the triplicate of White/Grey/Black PsyOps, which are respectively communications with the United States as an explicit source, with the United States as a source that is not named, and with the United States acting as if it is another source. The understanding of the psychological structure of meaning-making and cultivation of knowledge, that knowledges of the colonial are in fact altered by the coloniality of the source, is part of demonstrating how knowledges of psychological affectation are used in order to cultivate colonial control. Similarly, the lack of psychology resources in poor, black cities, the way that therapy has been in part created as a “white” sort of experience through no small effort on the part of therapists themselves, its reservation as a tool of white supremacy keeps many from realizing that conditions such as PTSD are not the domain of soldiers, but of black kids growing up around police violence, of victims of rape, of those who are seen as weak by a wider society for their PTSD rather than recognized and valorized.

The creation of fear, of disparity, the implied structure of the asylum, of the police, present in relationships between patient and doctor are foundationally harmful when present in a therapy setting. When discussing drugs such as benzodiazepines or amphetamines (as well as opiates in relation to the connection between depression and chronic pain) there is a fine line that most must tread in order to ask about potentially helpful courses of treatment without being labeled as “drug-seeking” and prevented from ever meaningfully accessing the care they need. There is a foundational irony here: so much of the mismanagement of narcotics in the pharmaceutical industry is due to the profit motive present at every point of their distribution, and part of what has caused an “opiate crisis” is poor pain patients taking advantage of a market created by pharmaceutical companies to obtain multiple prescriptions, selling some and using others to manage their pain. The same is true for those using amphetamines to treat ADHD, benzodiazepines for depression: so much of what leads to their abuse is an unwillingness of doctors to consider these as possible solutions, specifically because of changing attitudes from the panopticon tower of the DEA, an entity entirely outside the structures of psychological treatment. Hesitancy to explore promising use of drugs such as MDMA and psychedelic mushrooms in treating conditions like PTSD and cluster headaches, respectively, is in part due to this same structure.

Similarly, the notion of mental illness as tied to firearms, as tied to acts of violence and the use of firearms in them, has lead to a sort of false consciousness where background checks and psychological evaluations are seen as the panacea for mass shootings and gun violence, when neither is a particularly easy problem to solve within late capitalism. Gun violence is not defined by mass shootings: most violence is interpersonal, is directed by interests dictated in part by capitalist relations within a neighborhood, within rival gangs, disagreements between former friends, the final outcome of abusive relationships. All of these are structured by white supremacist notions of race, gender, sexuality, and the acceptable assemblage thereof. This is not to say that guns are morally neutral, but rather that they are part of a structural whole which is far more complex than any “easy” solution involving guns would have one believe. The notion that therapists should be able, without the involvement of the patient, to extend themselves into acting as agents of police power is one that makes therapy an incredibly dangerous place. Overwhelmingly those who would be harmed by such legislation, by the use of being unable to own guns as a marker of a certain sort of status kept on record by police, is the creation of a noted and legally consolidated class whose privacy can be invaded, whose lives can be directed based on interpretations from the sort of structural origin that the asylum itself also traces itself back to.

The reduction of aversion to psychotherapy as a means of control and the use of psychoanalysis to ground this critique as a singular course of being against recovery, against a fulfilled and happy life, as a reactionary response rather than a response to reactionary violence, is fundamentally a misreading of these disparities, these structures. It is intentionally and violently labeling resistance as the very sort of behavior which necessitates psychiatric intervention.

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epistolizer · 3 years

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Dogmatic Pluralism Results In Operational Intolerance

An old adage contends that it is all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Something quite similar could be said regarding living by the “live and let live” philosophy espoused by many early twenty-first century relativists thinking they are too cool and hip to be stifled by any one religious creed.

In a letter to the editor regarding an 4/27/2010 USA Today article analyzing the tendency of young adults not to be devoted to a particular faith, a respondent observed this trend is the result of being more educated than previous generations and “exposed to the realities of life in the twenty-first century.”

But rather than thinking for themselves, what may be taking place among the youth such as the letter's author is their indoctrination or brainwashing by those educators the young are spending record time around.

The correspondents on this topic claim to applaud and embrace an iconoclastic eclecticism. But in reality such souls do little more than parrot the notions expounded upon and bandied about the typical college lecture hall.

The author writes, “Who seriously believes that an infinite God, who created the vast complexities of the cosmos, can be understood by finite humanity, let alone be reduced to a statement of faith that's subject to the limits of human understanding?”

Some of humanity's greatest minds actually. It's actually a concept not all that difficult to get one's mind around.

The assumption that finite man cannot fully comprehend an infinite God is (to use a much maligned term) absolutely correct. Isaiah 55:8-9 says God's thoughts are not our thoughts.

However, though we cannot fully know God, it does not follow that God cannot fully know man. Since the infinite is beyond the finite, it is not beyond the realm of the possible for the infinite to reveal of itself what it knows the finite is capable of comprehending of that which is beyond our meager understanding.

In the New Testament, God's only Begotten Son Jesus Christ took on human form by being born of a virgin so that He might dwell among us, die upon a cross for our sins, and rise from the dead so that we might have eternal life if we admit that we are sinners and accept His free gift of forgiveness and salvation. In essence, God condescended to our level so that we might know Him.

When asked why evolution caught on as a theory of origins among the intelligentsia, a popular anecdote posits that Julian Huxley responded that Darwinism supported the sexual morays of that particular social class. Thus, all the grandiose proclamations against the dogmatism of the Almighty and the seeming existential nobility of the libertines ends up being a cover to sleep with whomever you want with the hopes of no regret the next morning.

One of the letters to the editor reads, “Beyond that is the nasty habit of many Christian fundamentalists to deny basic human rights to those who don't agree with them theologically.”

And what “basic human rights” might those be? Just about nowhere in the United States are “fundamentalist” Christians denying anyone the traditional rights such as freedoms of speech, creed or property where an ACLU media whore is not before a network news camera within a hour of such an alleged transgression transpiring.

When articulated by a progressive, the phrase “Fundamentalist Christians denying basic human rights” is actually a euphemism for daring to stand in disagreement of the trend towards sodomite matrimony or refusing to enforce preferences for certain groups simply because they are favored minorities. If anything, Christian “fundamentalists” are the ones having their “basic rights” curtailed and infringed upon here at home in America and most certainly around the world.

One cannot name a single regime around the world today where the rulers hold to an explicit traditionalist Christianity that abuses its power by persecuting its population. If anything, Christians unwilling to give up and compromise these truths that they hold dear by refusing to participate in the rejection of moral absolutes are more likely to be the ones persecuted (ironically by the ones that whine the loudest about the church's curtailment of postmodernist understandings of human liberation.

For examples, secularists and radical ecumenicalists applauded the decision on the part of the Department of Defense to disinvite Franklin Graham to the Pentagon's commemoration of the National Day of Prayer over his comments that Islam is an evil and wicked religion as evidenced by the 9/11 attacks and the treatment of woman in lands where that creed prevails.

For you see. Franklin Graham made the mistake of concluding that the First Amendment is something to live by rather than a abstraction to talk about in vague generalities. As Chesterton is credited with saying, the problem with the freedom of religion is that people end up discussing everything but religion.

It is of this fear of appearing impolite and offensively stepping on someone's toes in a manner that delicate psyches will never recover from that our society has come to such a screeching halt that it can become an act of considerable courage to simply state the obvious. And this is something the enemies of this great nation have learned readily.

For example, Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, in a 5/10/10 USA Today column titled “Graham's Anti-Mulsim Jabs Hurt Islam and America” applauded CAIR's public statement emphasizing the American value of “differing faiths united in shared support of our nation's founding principles” rather than the “message of intolerance that Graham advocates.”

But while CAIR puts forward a public face espousing tolerance and cooperation, the groups and individuals the organization supports behind the scenes advocate something else entirely. For example, CAIR has supported Islamic extremists such as Hamas who not only advocate a form of religious exclusiveness that goes far beyond anything advocated by Franklin Graham but also endorse violence against those with whom they disagree.

An old country song admonishes that you've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything. Should Americans continue down the path imposed by cultural agnosticism, the result will not be a relaxed, easygoing paradise. Rather, the result will be the establishment of a sociopolitical milieu where the deceptive will manipulate the weak to undermine the liberty of all Americans.

By Frederick Meekins

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mattprivettwrites · 4 years

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Re-entering the Dark Ages by our own volition: On the widespread access to and neglect of the word of God

Author’s Note: This post was originally written on August 15, 2013, and posted at my original web site, The MATTrix. As I transition away from that web site, I’m re-posting some things here along the way.

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Just a few short years ago the cliche was that every house in America seemed to have a Bible on the coffee table in their family room, but it was collecting dust for want of being used. Yet, as technology advances and the culture moves from a sort of respect-from-a-distance of Christianity to outright hostility for the faith, the Bible has been replaced by a remote control for each device contributing to our entertainment. Meanwhile, denominational leaders, pastors like me, and church members look out at empty pews, study membership rolls with myriad “inactives,” and wonder how the tide can be turned. We would all do better to realize how we got to this point.

Hint: One has something to do with the other.

Perhaps in previous generations this wasn’t the case, but today it can hardly be denied that a massive majority of people in America and the world at large do not have the worldview espoused by biblical Christianity. This is the necessarily result in a person who does not esteem God and His word rightly, which is where most people are. And that is ironic, because…

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A TIME WHEN THE WORD OF GOD WAS MORE ACCESSIBLE TO MORE PEOPLE THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW.

Now I have several versions of the Bible in print in my possession. I’m a pastor so that is hardly a surprise. But even if I had no copies of the Bible in print I would be able to do my job just fine. Open your web browser and go to Bible Gateway and you’ll be able to access numerous translations for free. There’s even a sight for the Greek Bible, which I’ve used more than once.

There are Bible programs like Accordance and BibleWorks which I’ve used, and others like Logos that provide the user with too many tools for Bible study to list right here.

As technology has gotten smaller and mobile, access to the Scriptures has become easy. I’ve got the Bible Gateway app on both my iPhone and iPad, and before that I used YouVersion. Some of those study programs for the computer also come in mobile versions.

Bottom line: It’s just never been easier to get your eyes on the word of God, to go back and say nothing of the wide availability of print versions of the Bible, many of which you can get for free.

In more formats than ever, in more languages than ever, people can access the wonderful words of life, which is great news, but also sad, because…

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A TIME WHEN THE WORD OF GOD WAS MORE FORSAKEN BY MORE PEOPLE WHO HAD ACCESS TO IT THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW.

When I was a kid I remember loving carrying my own Bible to church and even highlighting and underlining passages. Now I realize just how much grace God was showing me. Almost everyone had their own Bible, and if you didn’t there were Bibles readily available in the pews for you to use.

What a cultural shift we have seen. As a pastor I’m continually amazed by how many people don’t show up with a Bible and never bother picking one up when I tell them to turn to such and such a passage. Now sure, some use their iPads or iPhones as their Bibles. I’m absolutely fine with that. But a great many don’t even bother.

Maybe the churches themselves, in how they “present” the worship service, are partly to blame. More than one has taken the Bibles out of the pews and put it up on a PowerPoint type projection. I understand the thought behind projecting it, but I think it’s had an overall negative effect on the church. People don’t pick up the Bible and actually turn the pages. People don’t carry Bibles in and thus, when they might be struck by another verse somewhere else, they lack the ability to read it. Overall, there has just been an element of personal and corporate worship that has faded, or is greatly fading, away. And what’s happening in the church meetings themselves is just a microcosm of the bigger picture, where people just aren’t reading and studying the Bible.

Of course, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl 1:9). We aren’t the first batch of “God’s people” to neglect His word. By the time Josiah became king when he was a mere eight years old, Judah had endured 77 years or so of evil rule from Manasseh and Amon. And really, who knows how long before that they’d really been forsaking the Scriptures (to say nothing of the northern kingdom)?

This is how bad it got. When Josiah sent Shaphan on an errand to tell Hilkiah the high priest to count the money brought into the temple, Hilkiah then came to Shaphan and said, “I have found the book of the law in the house of YHWH” (2 Kgs 22:8). It surely is a great thing that the Scriptures, presumably the Pentateuch and perhaps more, was found. However, the question the reader should be asking is, “Why was it lost in the first place?!?”

Israel was entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom 3:2) and in this instance it appears they had not merely abandoned the teaching, but the book and the words themselves for a period of several years, perhaps several decades. Now thanks be to God that Josiah rejoiced at the finding of the Scriptures and lead the way in repenting from this sin (2 Kgs 23:1-27), so much so that it would be said “Before him there was no king like him who turned to YHWH with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him” (2 Kgs 23:25), but Israel proved to be a disobedient cautionary tale. Yet, if history is any guide, people have long failed to learn from their bad example (1 Cor 10:6).

From around the middle of the first millennium after Christ and for the next thousand or so years, what became the Roman Catholic Church, for all intents and purposes, took the Scriptures away from the people so that they were devoid of the Spirit-breathed revelation of God about Himself and His redemptive plan in Christ.

As a result, while there was always a remnant, the gospel was lost to the vast majority of the people who looked to the “Church” for the truth. A false gospel of faith plus works prevailed, with a sprinkling in of indulgences, increasing devotion to Mary, papal controversies and schisms, and a heavy dash of superstition.

Thanks be to God for the Protestant Reformation, which simmered under the surface for a couple hundred years but really got going in 1517 and onward behind courageous men like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, and others. Sola Scriptura became the first of the five solas of the Reformation. The Bible was, if not recovered, rediscovered and once again treasured, once again distributed to the people.

Nevertheless, today, almost 500 years after Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, our society, led by many who profess to know and love God, have re-entered the Dark Ages by their own volition. Never has there been a time when the Bible was so available, but “God’s people” were so biblically illiterate.

So-called pastors, shepherds of the flocks of God, do their people no favors with false gospels, prosperity theology, and watered down, entertainment and purpose-driven preaching, but every individual Christian is ultimately responsible before God. It’s His word and many of those who claim to be His people are forsaking it to their own peril, which leads us to one more point…

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A TIME WHEN IT WAS MORE IMPORTANT FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD TO BE SATURATED WITH THE WORD OF GOD THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW.

“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.” – Matt 24:42

“Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at the table, and will come up and wait on them.” – Luke 12:37

“Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” – 1 Cor 16:13

“With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints,” – Eph 6:18

“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” – 1 Pet 5:8

This is but a sampling of the verses just in the New Testament in which believers are instructed to be on the alert, or be aware, or be watchful. Peter gives us one reason why in that last verse. The devil is seeking to devour us. But wait, there’s more…

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.” – 2 Pet 2:1

“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.” – 1 Tim 4:1-2

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.” – 2 Tim 3:1-5

Guess what? We live in these times. When T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer are seen by a large number of people as qualified preachers and teachers of God’s word, we’re living in a spiritual desert full of “springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved” (2 Pet 2:17). And that’s just the prosperity preachers. Personally, the Steven Furticks, Perry Nobles, and James McDonalds are much more troublesome, to say nothing of the litany of story-telling, morality-espousing, Bible-lite preachers filling so many old-school and new-school pulpits each Sunday. Yes, we are living in these times.

So what do we do about it? We “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3).

How? “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).

Word of truth? What’s that? “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).

So then what we do? “Holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Tit 1:9).

My what means? “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season [that is, whether the preacher feels like it or the listener likes that word or not]; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. . . . be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim 4:2, 5).

So, as I believe it’s transparent, one cannot be a faithful Christian and forsake the word of God. Yet, it happens, it’s happening, and all signs point to it continuing to happen.

Let it not be said of you. This is God’s revelation of Himself, and if you are trusting in Him for everything [such as your salvation], then how can you not treasure His word? Do not live in your own version of the Dark Ages. God sent Jesus into the world that Light might shine out of the darkness. So treasure the word, love the word, read the word, study the word, memorizing the word. Pursue and live the truth to the glory of God.

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andreahamiltonblog · 5 years

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T H E C O L O U R P R O J E C T

Through the lens of a single colour, Scarlet, from Andrea Hamilton’s Sea Chroma colour system, we explore the underlying structures and cultural reference points which determine how we see. By journeying into the monochrome, we discover how colours cue our emotions, memory, senses and the world around us, and provide us with unexpected and meaningful connections.

Chiharu Shiota, Me Somewhere Else, Image No1

“When my feet touch the earth, I feel connected to the world, to the universe that is spread like a net of human connections,” said the artist Chiharu Shiota, describing her expansive, site-specific installation, Me Somewhere Else, held at Blain|Southern, London in January 2019. Standing in front of this powerful piece, I was transfixed. The Osaka-born artist fills empty spaces with vivid scarlet yarn, in a distinctive triangular schematic; Me Somewhere Else featured an otherworldly lattice delicately touching ghost-white feet, defining how consciousness spreads beyond the tangible, the way arteries spread through a body. Shiota’s work features immersive, networked environments spun out of yarn, often tangled with vehicles like boats, or used possessions, haunted with memories. Her work is imbued with a longing for her motherland and the loss of her future life blood through ovarian cancer. My mother also had cancer and I immediately understood that feeling: when you are willing every cell in your body to win its war against the disease.

Shiota works in scarlet more than any other colour, and for good reason: it’s a hue that has an extraordinary resonance. In the western world its deep religious associations are entwined with displays of power and wealth. In China the colour represents happiness and good luck, and today, Chinese New Year, you’ll see an explosion of scarlet and gold throughout the country and enclaves around the world: exuberant dragon dances ushering in joy, peace and prosperity for the coming year. In Japan it is the hue of life: the scarlet double-T torii (gates) at the threshold of Shinto shrines ward off demons. It is also a red that signals danger, anger and of course, passion. It’s fascinating that one shade of red should carry the weight of so many – and contradictory – signals. It is laden with symbolism: from the umbilical cord at birth and the neural pathways in the human brain, to the familial and cultural connections that bind us together, scarlet is the colour of life: the colour of blood.

Blood cells are made from protein, iron and oxygen. Within red each cell is a protein called haemoglobin, with sub-units called hemes which bind oxygen with iron. So, the more we inhale, the more oxygen mixes with iron and the brighter our blood becomes. This mixing of elements is the very core of our existence. Derek Jarman, diagnosed with HIV, wrote Chroma the year before he died in 1995. I think that perhaps when you explore the prospect of imminent death, you feel more fully alive. With his own senses about to be extinguished, he tried to capture the essence of this experience.

“Each victory of the red cells brings death…for the virus is red. The dance of death. Red plague cross. Red as scarlet fever – the small pox. Red has always embraced the hospital. The tenth-century physician, Avicenna, dressed his patients in red clothes. Red wool tied around the neck protected. Like for like. Colour for cure. Red moved the blood. Avicenna made medicine from red flowers. If one gazed intently at red the blood would flow……RedStopRedStopRedStop”

Chroma, Derek Jarman. Vintage Classics 1995. ISBN: 9780099474913

Iron is the heart of our existence on a planetary level too: Earth’s core is a solid ball of iron, giving us magnetic poles and the ability to navigate. Thanks to iron, humans could explore and, crucially, get back home again. Mars has so much iron oxide – the same compound as our blood – that it appears as a rusty-red. As if to make this connection very clear, the first lunar eclipse of the year rose low on the horizon, cloaked in scarlet. This ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’ was caused by the moon’s unusual proximity with the earth. In passing through earth’s shadow, our planetary companion acquired its reddish tint and for a moment, all of us were linked in wonder.

Scarlet is central to the Judeo-Christian story: the colour of sacrifice and atonement, of Christ’s blood. In 1464 Pope Paul II decreed that all his cardinals wear robes of scarlet, as they do to this day, both a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice but also a display of power and wealth. Scarlet dye was achingly expensive – in fact the word scarlet comes from the Arabic siklāt, meaning cloth dyed red. The original scarlet dye came from a tiny grub-like insect called kermes ilices, known in biblical times as the crimson worm: 80 kermes were needed for just one gram of dye. The insect’s fascinating life cycle is central to the faith: it parallels the Passion of the Christ, life out of sacrifice. When the female comes to lay her eggs, she forms her body into a hard shell around them and attaches herself to a branch. So firmly attached is she in fact, that this is her last act. The moment of birth is the moment of her death: as the newly-hatched kermes emerge from her shell/body, they are coloured red by her self-sacrificed remains and remain so for the rest of their lives, wearing their bloodline like a cloak. In the last, as her body disintegrates, the waxy white shells fall from the tree, leaving a snowy, woollen effect around the evergreen oak, like little sins forgiven. It’s beautifully illustrated in Isaiah 1.18:

‘…though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.’

Repairs in the Sky, no. 3 of 9, from the series What Is the Shape of This Problem? 1999. Louse Bourgeois. Image © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY.

If scarlet represents the Passion of the Christ and the blood of martyrs, one of the strangest contradictions is that it is also the colour of lust and adultery – the scarlet woman. This was fictionalised in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterwork, The Scarlet Letter. Written in 1850, and set in a 17th century Puritan Massachusetts Bay colony, it tells the story of Hester Prynne who conceives a daughter, though her husband is presumed dead, and for this shame she is required to wear a scarlet ‘A’ (for adulteress) on her dress. Hester’s innocent daughter Pearl is also stigmatised, which becomes the central question: how one can create a new life of repentance and dignity? It examines the notion of redemption – both personal and societal.

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850. Enhanced Media Publishing, 2017. ISBN: 9781387064564

Even in this day and age, wearing scarlet as a woman is to make a striking statement about sexuality and desire. Statistically, waitresses who wear red get more tips: a smear of Chanel’s Rouge Allure lipstick is a come-hither – and Jessica Rabbit’s scarlet dress, split to the thigh, a walking promise. As Derek Jarman wrote in Chroma, “Red protects itself. No colour is as territorial. It stakes a claim, is on alert against the spectrum”. It all comes back to the power of blood – that is the sensual promise of red after all, that a woman is sexually mature. Yet our relationship to the hue is mediated and controlled: women must not be flowing, open hearted, and passionate, to only ever allude to the workings of the body.

To Unravel a Torment You Must Begin Somewhere, no. 8 of 9, from the series What Is the Shape of This Problem? , 1999. Louise Bourgeois. Image © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY.

For artists like Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois, the use of blood red is empowering. Known for her exploratory, sexually explicit works, Kahlo’s cathartic response to finding her lover Diego Rivera in bed with her sister was to paint a riotous bloody scene, red paint spattered garishly all over the frame. Bourgeois painted whole rooms with it, sewed stories with it, and then made a lullaby out of red. Red is affirmation at any cost, it rises above the danger or contradiction of fighting for what we love.

In the end, scarlet is most truly the colour of joy – of being alive, of the rich panoply of human existence, from sacrifice to passion, from anger to love. As fashion designer Valentino said, “Red has guts… deep, strong, dramatic. A Goya red… to be used like gold for furnishing a house, it is strong like black or white.” My meditations on scarlet led from a surreal dawn on 11 April 2012, when after a long exposure I was lucky to capture a mirrored sea and sky of the warmest of light. I thought about how quickly red can be a deep pleasure or a pain, and ringing in my ears from generations of naval DNA was: “Red sky at night sailor’s delight, red sky at morning, sailor’s warning.” If you feel barely alive, listless and rigid – especially in these cold and dark months – harness the power of warm, rich scarlet to bring out your inner warrior. Refuse to be like others driving down the same road, and spring onto your own.

Explore Further:

Exhibitions: Now until 24 March: Louise Bourgeois, Artist Rooms, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Now until 20 March: Chiharu Shiota: Lifelines. 100 Jahre Revolution, Berlin 1918/19. Podewil, Berlin. 22 February-27 April: Ken Currie, Red Ground. Flowers Gallery Kingsland Road, London. 16 March-18 August: Anish Kapoor. Pitzhanger Museum & Gallery, London. 11 May-24 November: Melissa McGill, Red Regatta. Venice Biennale, 2019, Venice. 20 June – 27 October: Chiharu Shiota, The Soul Trembles, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.

Other Projects: Wondrous Strange

“These photographs aim to capture the fragile, the innocent emotions and developing identities of the adolescent models. In a way, they speak about something akin to a delicate but persistent memory that cannot be fully restored. Images that are enigmatic fascinate me, where there is an intriguing, disturbing feeling that reflects life’s challenges. Wondrous Strange’s photographs trigger within us a sense of something irredeemably lost yet still present.”

Colour Combinations: Scarlet/violet

No. 301 (Reds and Violet over Red/Red and Blue over Red) [Red and Blue over Red], 1959. Mark Rothko. Image © Museum of Contemporary Art.

When I think about rich reds, the combination of scarlet and violet comes to mind, because I see it frequently when gazing out to the sea at sunset. Towards the end of his life, Mark Rothko painted in rich, resonant colours: deep reds, bruised purples, sombre magentas, as if foreshadowing Jarman’s meditation on red at the end of his life. No. 301 [Red and Blue over Red] deep scarlet with a cool band of purple, keys into the beauty of floating fields of pure pigment, and reminds us that how colour is both deeply personal and also a shared experience – colour feeding emotion in the purest way.

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popcartoonkabala · 7 years

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A monster is a person in your neighborhood: Satire vs. acceptance on Sesame Street= Netzach/Hod She b Malchut

Super-hero cartoons are arguably as rooted in gangster literature and media as they are in any epic heroic tradition. It's only very recently that there's been a move to return Star Heroes to military legitimacy, as The Avengers become an official S.H.I.E.L.D project... we'll see how long that moment lasts. Because since World War II, the super-heroes have tended strongly to be identified exclusively as private citizens, defined by, if not their hostility to government, a certain amount of government distance from them, manifest as either fear/hostility, or dependence, as in the case of Iron Man, or Superman or Batman. None of them are government stooges, or instruments, but the local or national state tends to come to them in need of help with some regularity.

The relationship between the state-- Malchuth and the heroes-- Zeer Anpin, is fraught with tension, as is the way of serious long term relationships. One is the stability, the other is the agent of justification. One just wants to serve, the other just wants to feel good, safe. Gangster literature is what, in many ways, first developed this relationship in the context of the modern city itself. The functional agency of drawing and circulating satisfaction vs. the frustrating maternal Law, defending some kind of innocence at the expense of functionality-- the end of the story is a covenant drawn between the two, making them agent facilitators of each other. It's like every good marriage, until it falls apart perish forbid. The distinction between one and the other demands mediation, and a third emerges naturally in the polarity between the two: The infant is to become the Tzaddik. Trusted somehow by all, and ultimately the most vulnerable, his/her death is the epic tragedy that lets everything fall apart.

Gangsters, like babies and deities, are folk heroes stripped of the conceit of altruism. What their most selfish values begin to describe are the truest essential concerns of any individual, and any nobility, loyalty, or pragmatic intelligence they express become relatively ennobled, and their folly is only that of the most traditional of ruined heroes: hubris, intoxication, and foolish obliviousness to the consequence of their failed confidence. Scarface dies much like Achilles and Balder, once they've climbed to the top of the world to become the most beloved and feared of the gods, a war god and a sun god all at once-- that's when it's over. A failed hero is the beginning of all cautionary example.

What is Count Dracula if not another of these failed heroes, but cursed with unending success? See the ultimate horror of Dracula in the later films-- frustrated by the nature of what he is, yearning so great that satisfaction and victory cannot satisfy? The vampire hero, redeemed, must overcome even the yearning for satisfaction in order to become profoundly trustworthy. You'll observe, this is also the lesson that creates Spider-man, Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Wolverine, and many other Marvel heroes: only by giving up on personal satisfaction, be it in the form of love, revenge, wealth, or even divinity-- can they become what's trusted as a hero, and then they can overpower anything and everything, even death itself.

Frank Miller's neo-pulp heroes in Sin City take this a step further, rejecting even the appearance of even nobility itself in order to be heroes, and Chris Nolan's Batman is very influenced by Miller's version of gritty austere virtue-beyond-beauty. Here is the point where a Pop/super-hero remains distinct: he does not have to ever, give up his integrity. Pulp heroes, later day post modern comic icons, like John Constantine, Wolverine or any of the Warren Ellis Authority indy heroes outside of the mainstream mold. Their virtue is, partially, willingness to step past even needing to feel whole about their actions in order to do what needs doing. This is why Garth Ennis ultimately prefers to write war comics: that pragmatism is taken as a given, and the super heroic idealism is understood as a decadent privilege, at best.

Super-heroism rages, by it's nature against this criticism. This is most overtly expressed in Joe Kelly's Superman vs. the Elite storyline, notably adapted to animation in 2012. Don't call it naïve, don't call it juvenile-- call it simple, elementary, iconic. The hope of approaching moral depth and the implied darkness accepted in that is more resonant and literary, but betrays the purity that the heart yearns for from it's mythology. Maybe i'm exaggerating-- traditional religion and mythology tends to accept, even embrace, moral relativism and the challenge of dark nature and betrayal of ideals as a certain form of ideal-- but as civilization becomes more sophisticated and self aware, the antidote demands to be more pure, hence the progressively more senseless and emotionally immature nature of super-modern pop music, during any era that should be finding depth and collective appreciation of that capacity to acknowledge the disturbing range of what's clear about being a person, all the more so does the simplest, most even offensively naïve of narratives become resonant. Witness the victory of Christianity over both Roman paganism, Norse Aesir worship and folk Gnosticism-- why did the cruelest of all empires go with the religion that ultimately, theologically, justified its excesses the least? Because they needed the purest of purification to move on and be the kind of bad they were going to become from then on, in order to rule themselves all.

This is the degree to which satirical anti-heroes are central to the maturity of a culture. But once satirized effectively enough they can no longer be national icons-- they must either respond to the satire, and become better and more whole mythic heroes, like Krishna after Buddha, or Elijah after The New Testament critique of his fiery piety in the tale of the good samaritan. The choice becomes ironic pandering, ignoring the critique in search of more naïve audience, or better yet, some sophisticated refinement of character, and ideally a mythic defeat of the criticism. In this, the hero's ideals themselves defeat the villain embodying the critique. This is much of where the Batman vs. Joker conflict has gone in recent super-modernity, where Batman's commitment to protecting, or at least not killing, the monstrous grizzly and willfully chaotic murderer is justified as an ideological triumph-- not defined as a virtue by dint of dated calvinist “commitment to ideal”-- because no one respects that kind of ideological commitment as being authentically virtuous anymore. The triumph instead has been defined in specific contrast to the Joker's preference-- the Joker would like Batman to kill him, ostensibly, because that would prove the virtue of killing problems, and by NOT killing him, Batman proves his virtue and commitment to the legal process, in some strange sense, which strips batman of the danger of being a social terror.

The real reason for this hang-up is much more narratively practical-- the villain is too precious to kill off. The Joker, like almost every other villain of grace and note, is divinized by his meaningfulness. He was actually killed off in his second appearance, but to no avail-- the editors commanded the writers to find a way to bring him back to life only a short time later, and so it has been his practice ever since, much like Dracula or Moriarty.

The degree to which villains are different than monsters is the degree to which there is no reward in slaying villains-- only an end to the great narrative. Monsters, on the other hand, must be slain, as this is the original sin of demonization-- insisting that violent annihilation is the only solution to the needs of another “human.” A villain is preferred to be captured, and maintained in controlled captivity. This mystic clarity about the reincarnation of the slain enemy into distant freedom, as opposed to the power of sacred captivity, to keep one's enemy close, accessible, and monitored, like the very id itself. As indestructible and precious as the self itself, the moral of the story is Overcome, but never destroy.

Dracula's special and refined thirst is for the Moon, the untouched mother-- and his slave wife is the Venus, although the point where they meet is close. The early evening- But Venus is his weapon, while the Moon, ultimately, is his weakness, what gets him killed, even as much as he lives from nursing at it's behest and it's throat. This is the secret of the two “ה"'s in the four letter tetragrammaton “YHWH”.

One of the profound psychological innovations of Sesame Street is to reclaim the monstrous as synonymous with the human, thus overcoming at the most viceral and accesible level untold generations of demonization. Where traditionally Dracula and all the monsters represent the repressed and feared aspects of basic hungry humanity (“hell is other people”) Sesame Street takes Dracula and reframes his hunger as simple passion for the abstract and inherently unlimited satisfaction of numbers themselves. Whereas Count Dracula himself is the first amongst modern pop-monsters, The Count falls parralel to the sephira of Hod, sensetivity and co-dependance, the aspect of the god who gives numbers to the stars already created, unthreatening, although perhaps slightly nagging tho graceful and charming. Contrast this with the muppet I would consider his opposite number in rank and value, the Cookie Monster, who I would consider an expression of Netzach/Dominance, his hunger unavoidable and creepingly inquisitive, his pallette insatiable although still somehow respectful of some kind of engagement and personal limit in the context of personal need, reflected in his rectification as a vegetable eater who just appreciates the cookies as a “sometimes food,” even as his monstrous appetite remains intact. The villification of Venus/Innana is that of an insatiable lover who does not care much at all, but cannot long be resisted, or even resented, as the defeated visage of Ernie-without-cookies testifies.

A monster is just another person in the neighborhood; a reflection of our own normal needs and hungers, respected, honored, and safely sociably satisfied. Grouches and Satyrs are just themselves, and honored for and despite this-- what more radical message can civilization aspire to offer? This is, ultimately the great difference between Babylonia and Egypt: Egypt sought not (generally) to assimilate it's monsters and enemies, although there were periods where the Sethian was more integrated-- the foreign was somewhat inherently anathema-- and this nativist impulse endured until the Greeks overcame it, as was the nature of Greeks, to overcome nativisms with a glorious and all-consuming universalism. Rome's innovation was just to weaponize the Greek syncretic clarity, and apply it more aggressively, taking it's perfection for granted as much as was reliable. Once, to end wars within an empire, polytheistic pantheons were assembled, as a kind of a symbolic senate of the different priorities of different city-states within an empire. Egypt may have innovated this, if Babylon did not, it doesn't matter. Babylon's aspiration was not just to be an empire, but to be a great city, where things worked-- and it became clear that unless there was co-identification, and cathartic expression, of the different elements within their society, there would be conflict. The great Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh reflects this ambivalence, between the slaying of monsters and their integration and the acknowledgement of their humanity. The hero starts the story as a hated villain, an oppressive king resented by the populace he rules. A hero from outside of civilization comes to confront and slay him, this force of cruel and selfish modernity-- but instead, thanks to the intervention of certain gods, they become friends instead, and go on an adventure to slay another more monstrous monster. This conflict is greatly debated and engaged, before and after, and leads to conflict with greater forces, goddess and her pet cosmic bull. Our heroes slay the cosmic bull, and for this, one of them must die. A similar narrative is kept by the Greeks, when Kadmos slays the wrong dragon, the beloved of Hera, and so must lose his beloved sister Europa, forever. The moral is clear-- the more you can integrate, and not kill, the less threatened you will be. This is the purest moral of all civilization.

Sesame Street is in the unique summit between commercial and civil. Concieved, unlike most pop-cartoons, not for profit but for some kind of educational, civic or edifying purpose, specifically bound up in the grand project of universal education for all children, its excesses as far as violence and indulgence of children's affection for sugar and noise compel parental forgiveness and toleration, in light of the hope that the kids would enjoy this educational pop-media over less trustworthy and more commercially pandering tv shows. In it's early episodes, it could get away with a lot as far as puppet violence and questionable exploration of tantalization and titillation of kindergardeners, as it at least had positive tacit integrationist and educational function, about the nature and character of assorted letters and numbers(!). Once Sesame Street became established and somewhat universally successful, and thus, functionally institutionalized, it also became more sensitive to moral criticism, and able to be overtly responsible for the values and graces it would introduce, rather than assume were already part of children's paradigma. Cookie Monster introduces children to consumption, rather than just satirizing a hunger already observed, and becomes a certain kind of role model, now responsible to amend his own nature, so that the lesson of moral clarification become the implied arc of his journey, even as older episodes exist only in archive, except of course for classic routines, which are continually re-integrated into new episodes. The earliest Ernie and Bert routines remain in circulation and translation forever, because they are so fundamental and accessible-- a good omen for pop-longevity. Many classic figures are integrated into Sesame Street, but eventually used less and less because what they meant historically becomes less and less relevant. I was introduced to the character of Charlie Chaplin's “Tramp” in the context of Sesame Street, but they don't use even the Maria who played him so much anymore. Instead, is Mr. Noodles, the incompetent mime in Elmo's world who children joyfully correct as he manically tries to complete the most rudimentary of tasks, to no avail, until the advice of a quorum of offscreen children are able to get through to him, with the help of Elmo's omniscient voice. Elmo is the aspect of Malchus, in that he became the main character of Sesame Street, despite being a later addition to the cast. He is a monster child, like the once central Grover, but unlike Grover or Chaplin, he is defined by his absolute competence. His lessons are those learned after doing everything right, not wrong. He is the aspect of the wise child, not the fool, and so he is given an entire third of every episode of the final few seasons of Sesame Street-- until he himself, that is, the actor who played Elmo exclusively, was implicated in the hubris of the successful, and the good name of all that Elmo and Sesame Street are associated with became suddenly embedded in sexual impropriety. Such is the downfall of kings, specifically: fear of their appetites and preferences, because of their absolute power.

Sesame Street is too big to end because of an underage gay sex scandal or two, but not too big to need to be a bit castrated because of it. Pop-cartoons depend on grace, and the impression of trustworthiness

before both parents and children. As cool as we all want to be with what actors do on their own time, it was a bit more of a problem with Sesame Street, because the actors, especially in the case of Elmo, are so deeply and truly associated with the show itself. Not since Jim Henson himself was alive and available to make Kermit the Frog a celebrity, available for interview and all manner of guest appearance, was a character so genuinely and improvisably identifiable with the actor giving him voice.

It's not that “we” found out that Elmo himself was a chubby older black man with a thing for 17 year old men, it's that Elmo is such a naked expression of erotic power male power, easily identifiable as kind of Libyan Satyr; a naked, red wildman. Identifying THAT cartoon Id with an actual person, might just be a little hard to reconcile for long. So they appear to be phasing him out a bit, making the Elmo's world segments less personal and more theatrical, so that the distance of seeing him as more of a stage muppet that an intimate and eponymous pop force, like the great god Pan himself, kept alive only in Elizabethean chains, taken from the wild forest onto the city stage. A smaller King Kong is a loveable King Kong, unless and until he creeps you out. Then what're you gonna do?

The Sesame Muppets are monsters of the greatest virtue. They will not eat you, and don't even have to promise not to; the question dare not come up. They want to share and play responsibly, learn and help us learn. In this, they are a tikkun on the respective terrors and traditional issues with their respective forms. The Great Eagle, the “Big Bird,” hangs over looking patronizingly down for prey-- but Big Bird on Sesame Street is utterly without guile or threat, taking as much responsibility for whatever goes on as is possible, in his dreamy ignorance. This is the level of the great dove, divinity herself, rather than the predatory eagle or trickster raven-- the hawk coming to bring things to you, rather that to eat the eyes out of your head. Dracula is reduced to counting passionately only numbers and not bride-victims. The unconquerable hunger behind Dracula, the oceanic kraken come asurface, hungers only for cookies. Grover is something tragic, a hero partially defined by his constant failure. Through him, children learn the grace in not being good at something, and still trying because you care, and the effort is cute. But Elmo informs of the possibility of being inherently right at everything, and STILL being cute, and this is the different between the Messiah of Joseph and the Messiah of David. This is one of the strongest subplots in the old testament, and endures through the entire post Pentateuch bible, when the kingdoms of David and Ephraim (Joseph's son) literally split because of conflicting priorities. Modern scholarship identifies these two voices as representing conflicting political priorities involved in the bible's construction, Kabbalistic tradition prefers to assume that it's an internal expression of fundamentally complementary models. Joseph, identified with the sphere of Yesod, is identified with unyielding righteousness, and keeping of rules. He must die and fail at some point, if not in every generation, to make the point of the limitation of perfection in this world. The Davidic model, introduced in his forefather Judah, for whom the Jews are named, is about the triumph of earnest imperfection, bound up in a will to constantly do better, in a manner unbound by law or principle, although still beholden to the purpose and meaning of law and principle, and whose life, triumph and clarity can only come after being built by adherence to law and principle. The Davidic Messiah is the one who brings clarity to true purpose and divinity into the already formed Josephean structure. As such, he never dies, and cannot fail, but can only be disgraced into some degree of dismissal, as was the way with Elmo and King Solomon.

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ahopkins1965 · 4 years

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What Is the Sin of Fornication?

Bible / Bible Study / Topical Studies / What Is the Sin of Fornication?

Rick Kirby | Christianity.com Contributing Writer

Sunday, August 2, 2020

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From time to time, there are many things that we wish the Bible spoke more explicitly about than it does. For example, with baptism should we immerse or sprinkle, can women be elders, where did Cain’s wife come from, do all dogs go to heaven, and so forth? Despite the fact that some passages leave a little more room for interpretation than most of us are comfortable with, there are countless other areas where the Bible leaves no ambiguity at all. What fornication is and what God thinks about it are issues in which there can be no doubt where the Bible stands.

Paul wasted no words when he said, “Consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion and evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry” (Colossians 3:5), and the Hebrew author warned, “Marriage is to be held in honor among all and the marriage bed is to be undefiled: for fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). These words mean little in our present culture where values are rooted in cultural norms and change like a shifting wind.

But for those of us who hold to the authority of Scripture, there is a different standard as to how to discern between what is acceptable and good, and what is to be condemned and avoided. The Apostle Paul warned the Roman church to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Paul understood that the world’s system, which we now live in as we await the consummation of Christ’s kingdom, has its own values that are constantly seeking to “conform” everything and everyone into its own image, ironically, the very thing that God has been doing from the beginning of time (Romans 8:29). And there is no area where this cultural conformity is more graphically seen than as it relates to matters of sexuality.

What Do Christians Need to Know about Fornication?

The Bible is not silent on issues of sexual ethics, and it does not leave us to ourselves to figure out what sexual purity looks like. The Corinthian church had a reputation, but not one that you would want your church to have. Paul wrote and said, “It is reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such kind as does not exist even among that Gentiles (1 Corinthians 5:1). The Greek word which is used here – and over 20 more times throughout the New Testament – for immorality is the word πορνεία (porneia). Our English word pornography derives from porneia.

During the fourth century, the Greek text of the Bible was translated into Latin in a work we call the Vulgate. In the Vulgate, the Greek word, porneia, was translated to the Latin word, fornicati, which is where we get the word fornication. The word, fornication, is found in the King James Bible, but modern, more accurate translations, like the NASB and ESV, opt to simply translate it to immorality.

What Does Fornication Include?

Many Bible scholars teach that fornication is limited to premarital sexual interaction, but there is nothing in the original language or otherwise that truly suggests such a narrow view. This is likely the reason that modern translators chose to translate porneia as immorality, in most cases because of its broader reach and implications. The Bible doesn’t go out of its way to categorize particular sins under the heading of fornication, and neither should we.

I believe it is safe to surmise that porneia refers to any and all sexual activity that happens outside the context of God’s design of marriage including, but not restricted to, pornography, extramarital sexual intercourse, or any other sexual activity that does not honor Christ. The Apostle warned the Ephesians that “immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper for the saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks” (Ephesians 5:3-4). This snapshot provides an image for us that broadens the meaning to include even how we speak to one another.

I am compelled to qualify as well that this does not assume that all sexual activity within marriage is Christ-honoring. I am aware that much abuse takes place within the framework of marriage, and there is no question that God’s judgment will not be spared simply because a perpetrator sins against their spouse.

What Damage Can Fornication Do?

It is very sobering that the God who loves marriage and “hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16), in fact, provides one allowance for a covenant marriage to end in divorce. Jesus says that anyone who divorces for any reason “except for the reason of unchastity” (Matthew 5:32 NASB) commits adultery, and if a person marries someone who has been divorced for any other reason other than unchastity also commits adultery.

You’ve probably already guessed it, but the word unchastity in the Greek is the very word we’ve already identified as porneias. These are strong words that cut against the grain of our cultural views of marriage and divorce, but they are God’s words.

The sin of sexual immorality (fornication) has the potential to destroy the very relationship which God created to reflect his love for his bride, the church. Paul instructed husbands to “love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Don’t get me wrong, there are many things that can strike a death blow to a marriage, but it seems that sexual sins are especially heinous and destructive, and often inflict such deep wounds and hurt and ultimately break covenant in ways that seldom can be repaired.

To the Corinthian church, Paul offers this chilling warning, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ. . . or do you no know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For he says, ‘The two shall become one flesh’” (1 Corinthian 6:15-16). Again, the sin of immorality (fornication) is much broader than prostitution alone, but the principle we find here can be applied to all areas of sexual immorality. My body is not my own. As a follower of Christ, I have become part of his own body (1 Corinthians 12:12-13). When I sin sexually, it is as though I am dragging Christ and his own body into participating with me in this sin.

Fornication also seems to have a way of taking our affections and thoughts hostage in such a formidable way that some people never break the chains of their bondage. The writer of Hebrews wrote about the “sin that so easily entangles us” (Hebrews 12:1). This seems to be exactly what Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Ephesian believers that they “walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind being darkened in their understanding. . . having become callous having given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity” (Ephesians 4:17-19). Sexual sin creeps into our minds and takes us captive in ways that we often fail to discern until it’s too late.

Sexual sin can be a very private sin, but the seed planted in secret also bears destructive fruit, publically wreaking havoc in marriages, churches, vocations, and ultimately robbing believers of the joy and freedom of intimacy with Christ. All sexual sin is a counterfeit intimacy designed by the father of lies to take the place of our first love, Jesus Christ.

How Can We Overcome the Sin of Fornication?

So how does one battle and win in this area of sexual sin?

1. Acknowledge that it is God’s will for his people to live pure and holy lives and that he condemns sexual immorality of every kind (Ephesians 5; 1 Corinthians 5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3).

2. Confess (Agree with God) your sin to God (1 John 1:9-10).

3. Confess and confide in trusted elders as well (James 5:16).

4. Seek to retrain your mind by filling it with Scripture and actively engaging in the very thoughts of God himself (Colossians 3:1-3, 16).

5. Realize that Christ, alone, is the one who can free us from the bondage that the flesh, the devil, and the world have engineered with our fall in mind (Hebrews 12:2).

Even as I pen my thoughts, I realize that for the one bleeding and gasping for one more breath on the battlefield, these words may come across as hollow and quite detached from the horrors of the real-life struggles for holiness. Nothing could be farther from my intent. My words are not intended to be a checklist or an easy fix. I have simply sought to offer God’s truth in a world of lies and the prayer that God would free us all from the chains that bind us so that we may love him more.

Rick Kirby, along with his wife and children, live in Anderson, South Carolina. Rick serves as a corporate chaplain in the upstate of South Carolina, in addition to shepherding micro-church movements, which he does in partnership with the Evangelical Free Church in America and the Creo Collective. Rick has written as a freelance writer in the past with organizations such as The INJOY Group, InTouch Ministries, and Walk Through the Bible. Rick holds a Master of Divinity degree from Erskine Theological Seminary and presently is a Doctor of Ministry student at Erskine, as well. Through the years, Rick’s family has been deeply engaged in discipling efforts globally in Brazil, Ecuador and most recently in Puerto Rico. Among the many things Rick enjoys are woodworking in his woodshop and roasting (and drinking) coffee.

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