Thoughts from a Halloween walk
Oct. 31st, 2005 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronica_richTo get myself out of the apartment for Halloween (yeah, I admit it, I don't like answering the door to the little buggers) and to kill another bird with the same stone by coming up with something to write for my column in the paper this week, I went to an event put on by one of the local Christian churches, called the "Tribulation Trial." It's a walk-through a little over a mile long, consisting of various tableaux scenes acted out for you as you follow a Biblical guide telling you about this interpretation of The Book of Revelations.
I was raised in a Christian household - namely by virtue of it being the default of the area, since my parents didn't follow any other religion; Mom always felt guilty for not going to church more, and I don't think Dad really cared enough about or against it to have a strong opinion. I have not, however, been a Christian for a very long time and I'm okay with that - I didn't lapse, I actively decided not to be one. I may be wrong, but I don't lay awake nights troubled over it (although there's plenty to worry about in this world besides organized religion, or lack thereof - some of which is *caused* by said organizations themselves).
Why do you care? Well, you've read this far, so it has a bearing. I'm not going to say I NEVER question my decision not to follow a religion, because I'm not sure of what exists beyond this life, if anything at all. Also, that certainty is one of the very things I abhor about religious organizations - more than just Christianity - this idea that there's this ONE group of mere mortals who supposedly hold the Secrets To Life, The Universe, And Everything, when in fact, its individual members are as flawed and screwed up as the rest of us (if they really knew that much, would they make mistakes?). So yeah, even I doubt my own wisdom once in a while, and when I decided to go on this walk, I thought *Well, it's good for me to think about things every so often.*
Generally, what happens in this sort of situation is that you get in the middle of it and during, if your mind is sufficiently open, you see others' collective point of view, it forces you to question what you believe contrary to that, and you can get "caught up" in thinking *Why DON'T I believe this all the time?* (This is why I say it's good for me - I know what I don't believe, but I occasionally need to be reminded anyway.)
So, for about the first half of the walk, while I'm certainly not descending into a mass mindset hysteria, I do watch the scenes being played out and think *Hmm, good point* or it affects me emotionally - such as the scene of the kids at a ball game after the Rapture, panicking over the loss of friends and family "sucked up" into Heaven, crying, scared, and worried. (These are terribly effective tools of recruitment, by the way, and have worked for millennia for various purposes.)
And then ... something strange happened. I know I tried to keep my skepticism at bay so that I wouldn't automatically impose my own ideals and beliefs on what I was seeing (a good journalist tries to see more than one angle, after all), but the "scenes" took a turn that called it out of hiding. I watched quietly, thinking various things as I saw the "Jesus" and "Satan" characters argue, debate, and smite and be smitten, respectively. Satan's minions, the AntiChrist and the false prophet, were assholes, sure; they're supposed to be. But to be honest, their strident fanaticism was matched well by the strident fanaticism of the pro-Jesus agents.
Another scene near the end got my attention, as well. Let me say right here I realize this was a staging of ONE church's interpretation of Revelations. But, regardless if how you stage it, the whole book is generally regarded to be full of Really Bad Juju Brought On From High - by God, in other words. Not by Satan, but inflicted by the Big Guy Himself. And it's supposed to really happen someday, not merely be a fantasy or "what if" scenario - it WILL happen, no matter how evil or good we are. Period.
But on to the scene. It was Jesus on his heavenly throne, people coming up to be judged and either allowed into Eternity or thrown in the Lake of Fire. The first woman was a nonbeliever and tried to repent at the last minute, but was thrown in the lake. *No biggie* thought I, figuring that's always been the point of these things. But the second woman, who was also thrown into the "fire" was cast out because she hadn't accepted Jesus in the way He wanted her to accept him - she'd gone to church her whole life, taught Sunday school, said she'd done good works, gone on missions, memorized Scripture, and bowed before Him ... and it wasn't enough, because she hadn't accepted Him into her *heart* in the certain way He wanted to be accepted.
At this point, I couldn't help thinking the inevitable: *What kind of fucked up shit is THIS?*
I'm not sure what point I was supposed to take away from this interpretation, but what my brain made out of it was exactly this: We are born. We are given free will. We are not given clear instructions on what to do in life (the Bible contradicts itself in SO many places, and was written and re-interpreted over centuries by so many different HUMAN MORTAL FLAWED writers). And yet, if we don't do EXACTLY what is wanted of us, we're damned for eternity? It's a guessing game, then.
Here's a final thought, something I really did not put 2 and 2 together to realize until tonight (and I'm not naive, I just never *thought* of it quite this way). What we're being offered is either the Lake of Fire - suffering, pain, torture - or Heaven, for eternity. We either fry with the devil or catch rays with Our Lord God; THAT'S what our lives are supposed to boil down to, according to hundreds of years of educated scholars' reasoning. Everything we do is supposed to be to the selfish end of keeping our own asses out of that fiery lake and of pleasing some egotistical, narcisstic deity - not to help people around us, not to lift ourselves higher on a spiritual or knoweldgeable plane, not to refine our ethics and what we can teach future generations, but to keep from becoming ethereal crispy critters.
So, this begs the question - if this is what we're SUPPOSED to do, why are the vast majority of us born with the innate programming to not kill indiscriminately (which we violate with every incarnation of war Crusade we embark upon), to help our fellow people, and to protect the weak? It's not known whether doing any of this for its own sake - for goodness's sake - will please God or Jesus, in the end.
Food for thought.
I was raised in a Christian household - namely by virtue of it being the default of the area, since my parents didn't follow any other religion; Mom always felt guilty for not going to church more, and I don't think Dad really cared enough about or against it to have a strong opinion. I have not, however, been a Christian for a very long time and I'm okay with that - I didn't lapse, I actively decided not to be one. I may be wrong, but I don't lay awake nights troubled over it (although there's plenty to worry about in this world besides organized religion, or lack thereof - some of which is *caused* by said organizations themselves).
Why do you care? Well, you've read this far, so it has a bearing. I'm not going to say I NEVER question my decision not to follow a religion, because I'm not sure of what exists beyond this life, if anything at all. Also, that certainty is one of the very things I abhor about religious organizations - more than just Christianity - this idea that there's this ONE group of mere mortals who supposedly hold the Secrets To Life, The Universe, And Everything, when in fact, its individual members are as flawed and screwed up as the rest of us (if they really knew that much, would they make mistakes?). So yeah, even I doubt my own wisdom once in a while, and when I decided to go on this walk, I thought *Well, it's good for me to think about things every so often.*
Generally, what happens in this sort of situation is that you get in the middle of it and during, if your mind is sufficiently open, you see others' collective point of view, it forces you to question what you believe contrary to that, and you can get "caught up" in thinking *Why DON'T I believe this all the time?* (This is why I say it's good for me - I know what I don't believe, but I occasionally need to be reminded anyway.)
So, for about the first half of the walk, while I'm certainly not descending into a mass mindset hysteria, I do watch the scenes being played out and think *Hmm, good point* or it affects me emotionally - such as the scene of the kids at a ball game after the Rapture, panicking over the loss of friends and family "sucked up" into Heaven, crying, scared, and worried. (These are terribly effective tools of recruitment, by the way, and have worked for millennia for various purposes.)
And then ... something strange happened. I know I tried to keep my skepticism at bay so that I wouldn't automatically impose my own ideals and beliefs on what I was seeing (a good journalist tries to see more than one angle, after all), but the "scenes" took a turn that called it out of hiding. I watched quietly, thinking various things as I saw the "Jesus" and "Satan" characters argue, debate, and smite and be smitten, respectively. Satan's minions, the AntiChrist and the false prophet, were assholes, sure; they're supposed to be. But to be honest, their strident fanaticism was matched well by the strident fanaticism of the pro-Jesus agents.
Another scene near the end got my attention, as well. Let me say right here I realize this was a staging of ONE church's interpretation of Revelations. But, regardless if how you stage it, the whole book is generally regarded to be full of Really Bad Juju Brought On From High - by God, in other words. Not by Satan, but inflicted by the Big Guy Himself. And it's supposed to really happen someday, not merely be a fantasy or "what if" scenario - it WILL happen, no matter how evil or good we are. Period.
But on to the scene. It was Jesus on his heavenly throne, people coming up to be judged and either allowed into Eternity or thrown in the Lake of Fire. The first woman was a nonbeliever and tried to repent at the last minute, but was thrown in the lake. *No biggie* thought I, figuring that's always been the point of these things. But the second woman, who was also thrown into the "fire" was cast out because she hadn't accepted Jesus in the way He wanted her to accept him - she'd gone to church her whole life, taught Sunday school, said she'd done good works, gone on missions, memorized Scripture, and bowed before Him ... and it wasn't enough, because she hadn't accepted Him into her *heart* in the certain way He wanted to be accepted.
At this point, I couldn't help thinking the inevitable: *What kind of fucked up shit is THIS?*
I'm not sure what point I was supposed to take away from this interpretation, but what my brain made out of it was exactly this: We are born. We are given free will. We are not given clear instructions on what to do in life (the Bible contradicts itself in SO many places, and was written and re-interpreted over centuries by so many different HUMAN MORTAL FLAWED writers). And yet, if we don't do EXACTLY what is wanted of us, we're damned for eternity? It's a guessing game, then.
Here's a final thought, something I really did not put 2 and 2 together to realize until tonight (and I'm not naive, I just never *thought* of it quite this way). What we're being offered is either the Lake of Fire - suffering, pain, torture - or Heaven, for eternity. We either fry with the devil or catch rays with Our Lord God; THAT'S what our lives are supposed to boil down to, according to hundreds of years of educated scholars' reasoning. Everything we do is supposed to be to the selfish end of keeping our own asses out of that fiery lake and of pleasing some egotistical, narcisstic deity - not to help people around us, not to lift ourselves higher on a spiritual or knoweldgeable plane, not to refine our ethics and what we can teach future generations, but to keep from becoming ethereal crispy critters.
So, this begs the question - if this is what we're SUPPOSED to do, why are the vast majority of us born with the innate programming to not kill indiscriminately (which we violate with every incarnation of war Crusade we embark upon), to help our fellow people, and to protect the weak? It's not known whether doing any of this for its own sake - for goodness's sake - will please God or Jesus, in the end.
Food for thought.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-01 07:33 am (UTC)It's a very interesting point you bring up at the end--the idea that we have to do things a certain way, or else it doesn't count. I've wondered about this on a different level.
See, I've always kind of wondered if good behavior has a virtue in and of itself, or if it's only worth something if you're deliberately avoiding bad behavior. Like, say that you hate broccoli, and one day eating broccoli is decreed immoral. Well, it's easy for you; you have no desire to eat broccoli, you never have, it's just dumb luck that your natural tendencies correspond with what is considered morally right. So are you really a moral person, when all you're doing is what comes naturally to you? Or are you no more "moral" than someone who snorts crack of hookers' asses because that's what comes naturally to them?
I guess I am just profoundly bothered by the idea that being good isn't enough--you have to be good in the right way. That seems to just be asking too much of humanity.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-01 05:14 pm (UTC)realizedadmitted that I never believed in god and that christianity and organized religion in general was all very fishy. I tried pinning my faith on science, that didn't work, not that I had a lot of faith really. Then bad things happened and I stumbled upon Lao Tzu, and its not much of a religion exactly. The book itself doesn't read like a technical manual on how to talk to god like the bible, but *some* of the principles in it, married with some other philosophies I've found over the years dealing with interpersonal relationships and society as a whole have turned me from a confused/scared/existential non-beleiver into a pretty mellowed out hoopy frood. :)My own $.02
Date: 2005-11-01 06:32 pm (UTC)I've never believed in God or any of that stuff, even though as a teenager I actively tried just to see what the fuss was about. Nothing ever 'touched my heart' or convinced me of anything but the fact that a lot of people buy this stuff wholeheartedly and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. A long time ago I posted something called My Journey To Reason that sheds a good bit of light on my athiesm. There are also several entries I have tagged to this effect as well, appropriately called athiesm.
For a wealth of information on the contradictions of scripture, see the Skeptic's Annotated Bible | Book Of Mormon | Qu'ran. Good stuff, that.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:03 pm (UTC)I wonder how many professed Christians have read the entire contract and understand it .......
Re: My own $.02
Date: 2005-11-02 04:09 pm (UTC)As I told
Thanks for the links; I'll have to follow them when I have more time.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:12 pm (UTC)Bah. Frankly, it seems to me Christianity sets out to make life harder and more painful than it already is - and it IS, plenty, already.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:16 pm (UTC)(or, to quote what some pseudo celebrity said in reference to that dude saying God would kill him if he didn't collect 8 million dollars... "God is an Italian guy named Vinnie who..." oh, crap I forgot the rest of the gag)
You know, Christian groups shouldn't get angry about movies and such promoting the "gangster" lifestyle, 'cause it might actually help people relate to the faith.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:25 pm (UTC)I now have the urge to watch old gangster fims now, the ones the old Hollywood censorship boards hated...
ANGELS WITH TOMMY GUNS! XD
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:35 pm (UTC)Was the first time in a long time I'd seen any of those scenes, so it was the first thing I thought of when you mentioned the gangster movies. Whee!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 04:56 pm (UTC)Uh oh. I think I might vanish in a puff of logic in a moment.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:13 pm (UTC)And how DARE he try to tell ME how to live MY life. I swear to God, it's like some mother with a four-year-old having the nerve to tell me I don't know as much about child-rearing as she does because I haven't popped one out, when I've had a sister 11 years my junior FOR 22 YEARS and lived in the same house babysitting this child for the first 7 of those years.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 06:49 pm (UTC)that might explain why my uncle the bipolar insect-eating harley-riding hangliding daredevil one day became a born again christian overnight and itsnt any fun anymore. Last time I saw him he asked me if I had found jesus yet. I pointed to my husband.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/974/539/1600/erm%20074.jpg
:)
no subject
Date: 2005-11-03 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-03 12:51 am (UTC)