May his days be few; may another seize his position. (NRSV)

Of course God works in mysterious ways and often needs his followers to do his dirty work. So if this movement gets enough momentum, it’s only a matter of time before some lunatic tries to act on this “biblical advice.”

The ironic thing, of course, is that these Christians seem forget one of Jesus’ main teachings: “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:24)

(via)

Who gets your vote?

The Indianapolis Public School system has a policy to ban certain websites from being viewed at school.  I certainly hated it when I was in high school (we found ways to bypass it if course) but it’s a reasonable idea.  And the list of subjects banned is pretty straightforward: Pornography, Social Networking, Atheism and “Alternative Spirituality”, Games –

Wait, what?  Sites on ‘alternative spirituality’ are banned?  From the policy (pdf hosted on FFRF website):

“Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism.  Occult Practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or other forms of mysticism are represented here…  This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events.”  [emphasis mine]

Any site addressing LGBT issues or sexual identity is also banned – great idea for the kids going through confusing times, right?

Ok, first of all, I don’t know why “atheistic views” are in the same category as Satanism.  But ignoring that idiocy, this is hugely discriminatory.  “Normal” religious sites are allowed, but not the “scary minority” religious views.  I could understand if all religious sites were banned but there’s no way to justify banning only some.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is on the case, writing a letter to the superintendent and urging people to voice their concerns.

Here’s a little ditty I learned back in the days of Vacation Bible School:

The Lord is good to me,
And so I thank the Lord,
For giving me
the things I need,
The sun and rain and an apple seed.
The Lord is good to me.

I suspect that many of you are baffled, particularly those of you from outside the US. This is supposedly the prayer of Johnny Appleseed, an early American missionary who traveled the frontier, planting small patches of apple trees along the way.

The song was featured in a short Disney film that was inflicted on boys of my generation. It depicted Johnny as a simple man, his only possessions a bible, a pouch of apple seeds and a tin pot which he carried on his head. Since it’s a Disney cartoon, Johnny pauses to cavort with the woodland creatures at every opportunity.

The Swedenborg Collective

Pullquote: I have often talked with angels on this subject, and they have invariably declared that in heaven they are unable to divide the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and this One is in the Lord.
Emanuel Swedenborg

This is one of those cases where the reality is more complicated than Disney could handle. The man who inspired the legend was named John Chapman, a curator of apple nurseries in Ohio in the early 19th century. He was indeed a traveling evangelist, but not the sort that Disney imagines. Chapman was a actually a traveling Swedenborgian.

The Swedenborgian Church is an offshoot of Christianity, based on the writings of an 18th century Swedish visionary named Emanuel Swedenborg. Like many religious visionaries, Swedenborg believed that Christianity had been obscured by centuries of misunderstanding, and that he was receiving revelations of the pure religion directly from God. His new religion was mystical and difficult to grasp, but he clearly rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. He also rejected the simplistic interpretation of Sola Fide (faith alone), and insisted that faith is only a guide to the true path to salvation, which included works of charity.

The Swedenborgian “New Church” became moderately popular in England, then spread to the US in the early 19th century. In America, which they called the “New Jerusalem,” Swedenborg’s writings were influential if not exactly popular. It’s hard to say how many members the church had, but it did directly influence the Transcendentalists. Swedenborg’s concept of a three-tiered heaven may have influenced Joseph Smith’s emerging Church of Latter Days Saints.

Johnny Appleseed’s Religion

Pullquote: “This man for years past has been in the employment of bringing into cultivation, in numberless places in the wilderness, small patches (two or three acres) of ground, and then sowing apple seeds and rearing nurseries.”

John Chapman was a star player, from the early days of the American church until his death in 1845. Consider this extract from a meeting of the English branch of the New Church, shortly after the American branch was founded:

There is in the western country a very extraordinary missionary of the New Jerusalem. A man has appeared who seems to be almost independent of corporeal wants and sufferings. He goes barefooted, can sleep anywhere, in a house or out of a house, and live upon the coarsest and most scanty of fare. He has actually thawed ice with his bare feet. He procures what books he can of the New Church Swedenborg, travels into the remote settlements, and lends them wherever he can find readers [...] This man for years past has been in the employment of bringing into cultivation, in numberless places in the wilderness, small patches (two or three acres) of ground, and then sowing apple seeds and rearing nurseries. (quoted in Occult America, 39-41)

No word on whether or not he danced with raccoons.

Some years back, the historian Mike Wallace coined the term “Mickey Mouse History” to describe the sanitized, streamlined history that frequently gets produced in America. This is the sort of commemorative history that is informed more by nostalgia or ideology than historical principles. The Disney image of Johnny Appleseed is a perfect example of this, but the problem goes deeper.

The period where Chapman was active is known as the Second Great Awakening. It’s usually depicted as the triumph of Evangelical Christianity as it spread through the land, driven by tent revivals and itinerant preachers. Stories like Chapman’s remind us that the reality was far more complex than that. Religion in America has always been heterodox and complicated, from the founding to today.

The most logical answer to why God won’t heal amputees is that either God doesn’t care or doesn’t exist. This would also explain the lack of miraculous healings for people with Lou Gehrig’s diseases, long-term quadriplegics, untreated AIDS patients and those with Parkinson’s disease, mental retardation, Down syndrome, and a host of other maladies.

Christian apologists offer different explanations to try to make sense of why bad things happen to good people. Among their explanations for why people who have lost limbs are never made whole by God (also detailed on the “Why Does God Hate Amputees?” website): healings for amputees aren’t part of God’s plan; the lord answers prayers by saying “No”; God needs to remain hidden, and regenerating a limb would display the Lord’s miraculous powers too openly; God has a special purpose for amputees—just the way they are; and God answers the prayers of amputees by having scientists develop artificial limbs.

These explanations remind me of my parents’ answers when I started to question whether Santa Claus was real. How does he get down our chimney when he’s so fat? He can squeeze himself down to fit. How can he deliver presents to every child in the whole entire world in one night? He moves faster than we can imagine. How big does his bag need to get to carry all the presents? It’s a magic, bottomless bag. How can he eat cookies and milk in so many homes? He just does. My parents’ valiant but ultimately weak explanations held off the truth for a year, but eventually, like all children, I had to face the truth.

—William Lobdell, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace (2009), p. 210-211

I can’t understand why they think God wants them to remove a part of their penis, however. But maybe that’s because I’m not a sadomasochist.

A Canadian loony has been convicted of “criminal negligence causing bodily harm for a botched amateur circumcision he attempted on his four-year-old son”:

However, Justice Marion Allan acquitted the man, who along with his family can’t be identified under a publication ban, of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.

The child, now aged six, was treated in hospital for what doctors said was an incomplete circumcision and has since made a full recovery.

The boy’s father, who subscribes to a religious philosophy that incorporates Hebrew elements, previously tried to circumcise himself and also had to seek medical help.

He learned about circumcision on the Internet and sent away for special instruments.

Now normally I’d pass something like this off as mental illness. But that would be mistaken, for most of the major world religions think the same way. They think God wants penile foreskins removed. Others think God wants the clitoris removed.

Normal people think this.

It’s kinda scary.

Here’s an old not-funny joke I heard while living in Wisconsin:

A man by the name of Ole lives to a ripe old age and dies. He awakes to find himself in Hell, which is a bit of a surprise. Still, he figures he might as well get a look around before the torture starts. He wanders over to another lost soul, who turns out to be the preacher whose church he attended as a kid.

“Father Dunn!” Ole exclaimed, “You’re a Godly man, what are you doing in Hell?”

But the preacher wouldn’t meet his eyes. The man just gives him a sickly smile and shuffles off.

Feeling unsettled now, Ole wanders over to another lost soul. Ole immediately recognizes the face from one of his textbooks: it’s Martin Luther.

“Martin Luther!” Ole shouts, “What are you, of all people, doing in Hell?”

But Luther just mutters something in German and points over to a third lost soul in the distance. Perplexed, Ole hikes up to this final man. As he draws closer, he recognizes (somehow) the figure of Saint Paul.

“Saint Paul,” cries Ole, now completely befuddled, “what’s going on?”

Paul looks at Ole for a long moment before breaking down in tears. “Works!” he weeps, “It was works all along!”

No longer being Christian means no longer having to ask, “Am I doing it right?”

It means being free of the nagging worry that my understanding is not correct and that my eternal salvation is in jeopardy. It means being able to read a new interpretation of Paul’s theology and not having to ask, “Is this it? Is this what I should have been believing all along?”

What don’t you miss about your previous religion?

Update: Video fixed.

What? Now you’ve opened up your soul to Him and made a home for the Lord in your heart, too?….

Get your own Redeemer, Matt. I have a one-on-one, personal relationship with Jesus, and I don’t remember inviting you in on it…. Just because I happen to have proselytized unto you on His behalf, that doesn’t mean I welcomed you into the fold or expected you to embrace the one true Messiah. I was only saying that stuff out of devotion to His teachings, not because I wanted you to get with God, too.

I was the one who found that little cartoon pamphlet on the ground. I was the one who looked into my soul and realized that I’d been living a lie spun by the great deceiver. Iwas the one who got down on my hands and knees, right there in the bus shelter, and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart—not you. I broke the bonds of sin and was reborn into a new and beautiful world of eternal life, man! And now, you want to get some of my eternal life after death for yourself.

You’re lucky I’ve devoted myself to the worship of a forgiving and benevolent messianic figure, or else I’d seriously want to pop you one right now.

Spare me the rhetoric about loving kindness, turning the other cheek, and “all are welcome at the table of the Lord.” This isn’t about that, Matt, and you know it. This is about me finding something really great, and then you swooping in from outside to take my cool new personal Savior and claim Him for yourself.

You can read the whole thing here.

A film which doesn’t tell you what to believe, but asks you what you believe. A little more than three-years ago, a journalist named, Nathan Lang, our storyteller, along with a few buddies, also journalists, set out on an expedition of sorts. They were in search of the meaning of God, which if you know them, is peculiar because Nathan, at least, is not religious. But they would do it by way of exploring what God looks like to us, or in other words, how we view God.

Follow along as they construct a curious Box and take it to iconic street corners and small towns, across the country. Inside The Box, there’s a stool, a drawing table, a sketchpad and pencils, plus microphones and cameras to record all the action. The Box, which becomes a main character in its own story, is a vessel for people to step inside and answer the two, fundamental questions the film asserts: What does God mean to you? What does God look like to you? What happens next is a complete wildcard. Some people draw. Some people get angry. Everyone who goes in there is moved to self-expression.

It’s an intimate peek inside our feelings – which is all we’ve got, since it’s impossible to come by facts about God. Then with the help of an engaging collection of theologians, scholars and an archeologist, we analyze the answers and drawings. Why do we have these images and ideas in our heads? Is this really God? This expedition leads down an evocative trail from our twenty-first century perspectives to the roots of our inspirations. One cannot help but be transported inside The Box and once inside, as the filmmaker finds out, one cannot help being transformed by the experience. God In The Box offers you a unique window to examine the views of others and a mirror to examine your own.

Here’s the trailer:

I am a geek.

I sense your incredulity. As evidence, I hold up my screen name. VorJack was the name of my first roleplaying character — in the Marvel Comics Roleplaying game, of all things.

Have I established my bona fides? Let’s move on.

During high school, one of my friends was a fantasy geek. Like most teens of that type, he was working on a novel. Mind you, he wasn’t working on the plot or the characters. He was working on the most important part for a geek: the magic system.

Magical Realism

It was surprisingly difficult. At the time it was popular to treat magic as a science, and so the magic system had to be rational. No Harry Potter wand waving allowed. It had to start from some basic premises about the nature of magic, such as where magical energy came from and how people could manipulate it. From there it had to logically develop into magical practices, practitioners and traditions. The goal was a system of magic that was roughly self-consistent.

Everything should naturally flow from the premises: once you’d accepted them, everything else should make sense. But of course, my friend had complete control over what those premises were. This was, after all, fiction. These premises could also be vague. What is magical energy? Why, it’s energy that is magical. Nor did these premises have to be justified. Why does magic run in ley-lines and form pools of magic at the junctures? Because that is its nature.

The final result had to allow my friend to write the incredible scenes he had in his head, but not be so powerful that it threw the world he was creating out of balance. As long as he got that right, everything else could be molded to suit.

Wave Your Theological Wand

Pullquote: The goal of theology is to sound plausible without providing real information.

Now, at this point we were attending a Catholic high school with classes on introductory theology. Over time, I began to see a resemblance. Like a magic system, theology seemed to begin with certain premises. Like the magic system, these seemed to be vague. God is omnipotent. Well, what does the mean exactly? They claim God is timeless. How can something be timeless?

These questions didn’t have answers because these words didn’t have meaning. Like “magical energy” and “ley-lines,” their goal is to sound plausible without providing real information. These were the premises that the theologian could bend to suit the need. And the result of this process was to describe an active, interventionist God while still accurately describing the world we live in.

I think that’s why Stephen Law’s God of Eth example works so well. Law takes the “Problem of Evil” argument and turns it into the “Problem of Good” argument. The arguments the reconcile the premise of a good deity to our reality work just as well for the premise of an evil deity. The premises and the resulting arguments are unfixed from reality. Nothing pins them them down.

Back when I was an undergrad, I used to sit around the cafeteria table and listen to my friends discuss the latest fantasy novels. Robert Jordan was just hitting his stride about that time, and his Wheel of Time series was a popular topic. My friends would obsess about the characters, work out their genealogies, ponder the themes and subplots and try to ferret out all the hidden connections in the work.

Problem is, I don’t think many of those ideas were put there by Robert Jordan. I always had the nagging feeling that my friends were putting more effort into the books than Jordan himself. Later on I learned that many genre authors leave things intentionally vague. It allows them to stay flexible rather than being pinned down by things they’d previously written. The hints and mysteries were there so that Robert Jordan, Tad Williams and Mercedes Lackey could keep cranking out the books without getting bogged down.

Synthetic Scholarship

There are some truly impressive examples of people working out the details and finding hidden meanings to works, only to be proven completely wrong. The most famous example was Henry Littlefield’s theory that the Wizard of Oz is a parable of American populism and the silver standard. It’s a really impressive argument, loaded with tons of connections between populist ideas and symbolic representations within the work. It’s also wrong, as anyone who knew L. Frank Baum’s political leanings would realize.

A more modern example is the SNES game Chrono Trigger, a favorite of mine from back in the day. It’s a classic among video games, and it spawned the Chrono Testament theory. Based on the name, you can probably guess that it’s composed of biblical symbolism and themes supposedly woven into the game’s story. This theory should have died when it was revealed that none of the game’s creators were Christian, but it still seems to attract some attention.

And of course there’s the ever popular claim among some Christians that the entire Old Testament points to Jesus Christ. The original scribes would likely disagree, and millions of modern Jews live and read the Tanakh without accepting Jesus’ messianic claims.

Unanswerable Questions

Pullquote: Is each pattern equally valid, or is the creator’s pattern the only accurate solution?

Does it matter that these meanings aren’t original? What does it signify when you find a meaning or an idea in a work, but the creator did not put it there? Is the meaning not “real”? Imagine a connect-the-dots puzzle, where you find a way to make a Celtic knot-work design when the author intended it to be a giraffe. Is each pattern equally valid, or is the creator’s pattern the only accurate solution?

S.T. Joshi, a scholar of horror fiction, once disagreed with Shirley Jackson’s interpretation of her own story, “The Lottery.” Problem is, Joshi’s suggestion made more sense than Jackson’s did. In that situation, who do we side with?

I don’t have a solution to these problems of meaning, but I do have an observation and a warning. It seems to me that we’re actually too good at finding patterns. We find connections that do not exist and hidden meanings that were never intended. We are even more capable of getting carried away by our discoveries. I think that we should be cautious when we find ourselves caught up in the “real” meaning of a work — and this applies to Christians who are convinced they have the “proper understanding” of the Bible, and to atheist scholars who believe they’ve uncovered the fictional underpinnings of a gospel story.