God and Space Exploration

Having read Jay Barbree's book about Neil Armstrong and his role in space exploration, I was overjoyed at seeing there was a documentary on Netflix on the Apollo programme, "In the shadow of the Moon". While it made some omissions of details in the book, I was really moved by it, as though in me there was a little boy with an urge to fly to the stars. I couldn't help wondering about whether this was not the next "giant leap" for mankind, to fulfil Armstrong's vision of further exploration.

I was briefly brought up short by the Christian beliefs that have always been present in the back of my mind: what if we are meant to wait for God to take us into His heaven after the death of our planet and of our mortal bodies? But then I also remembered all the assumptions that I had made about Christianity that had been proven false or, at best, improbable, such as the sovereignty of the traditional church and doctrines that have sprung up to ensure this sovereignty over that of Jesus Christ and our relationship with him and our fellow humans.

What if space travel, the urge to leave this planet behind, can be a unifying force for all of humanity? God prevented the ancients from building the Tower of Babel, but He did not prevent us from building gigantic metropolises with towers that seem to reach the heavens. This, I suspect, He allowed because humanity has, with all of its bumpy ride through history, still remembered its humanity - we were still able to produce masterpieces of art and music that reminded us of a spiritual realm that transcends the material; we still had the capacity for awe and wonder.

At the end of the documentary all the astronauts testify to how they were spiritually moved by seeing our planet from space, how small our squabbles on Earth look when we gain a bit of perspective on our place in the Universe. I believe that the human race cannot hope to enter that realm of deep space again before we have learned to humble ourselves before a greater vision. We cannot hope to achieve great heights when our eyes are on the things below and when we try to rationalise our selfish beliefs and our greed through science and technology designed to keep us earthbound and focused on the empty trappings of our consumerism.

This is why I wrote the song "Maskanda", a song about my first encounter with the magical guitar, presented to me by a strolling Zulu minstrel on the Natal rural roads. To me, this musician presents the human being in all his vulnerability and capacity for wonder. It is because we are losing touch with our humanity that we are becoming arrogant in our thinking only in materialistic terms, glorifying those idols held up to us in the media who dictate our whims and desires.

We can never hope to reach those heights that Armstrong achieved under these circumstances. He was the humble son of a farmer and happened to be a brilliant pilot, which is why he was chosen as commander for this, the most important pioneering venture of the 20th Century. Yet he never sought glory for himself, always turning personal praise into praise for the whole team - not just Apollo 11 but also those missions that went before him. While fellow astronauts like Aldrin were dining out on their celebrity status, he shunned the spotlight and became a media recluse. Instead he laboured tirelessly and passionately for NASA to further and refine its space programme, becoming frustrated at administrative shortsightedness that mothballed the space shuttle programme among other projects.

When the astronauts were paraded before and lionised by the world, they always heard people say, "We did it! We got to the moon!" - never, "You did it". I cannot help but feel that this mission, the urge to walk among the stars, belongs to the whole of humanity, not just the 24 astronauts or the country that put them there. But we cannot do this while we have our heads full of technology without any room for wonder about the Creator who made this Universe and gave us the ability to overcome all of the humanity's problems if only we would humble ourselves before Him. We cannot hope to achieve this great step for mankind when the children of men are squabbling over which piece of dirt on this tiny, exquisite planet belongs to them.

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe God intends only for us to wait for His return and give up our exploration of space in the process. But while we wait, I'd love to see what this creature, the human being, can achieve with this splendid thing called "the mind" in combination with the full awareness of his tiny, humble yet important place in the Universe.

The Nazi bully vs. the Christian hamburger

If our faith is indeed the one and only truth, it will be proven so. Nothing will shake it if it is on the foundation of truth that is the Word of God, Jesus Christ. We have to be constantly open to renewal of our ideas about our faith, otherwise we will miss something terribly, vitally important. Today Galileo is hailed as a revolutionary thinker, yet he was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for daring to turn the ideas upon which science and the view of the Universe were founded, upside down. A church that clung to tradition and one way of seeing the universe was afraid of the truth, lest it rock their leaking boat. Martin Luther turned the idea of worshipping God upside down in his day, only to establish another church which would get itself entangled in tradition and religion, trying its best to keep Christianity “respectable.” As did so many Christian visionaries and churches that came afterwards. All shook the assumptions of their day, but all eventually lost sight of the person of Jesus Christ and what he really meant to the world.

Was Christianity ever meant to be respectable, in the worldly sense? Looking at Jesus for a start, we see a man who was deemed a drunkard and who kept the company of low-lifers like prostitutes and tax collectors. The powers-that-be treated the apostles who spread the Good News of Jesus’s message afterwards with total distrust: they were imprisoned, stoned and beaten. It was only because this underground movement was threatening the stability of Rome that it was made a state religion. The ungodly relationship of church and state permeated history: when the Mediaeval Christian apologist Marguerite Porete wrote her book The Mirror of Simple Souls in which she claimed that one could follow Christ without going to church, she was charged with treason and eventually burned at the stake.

More recently, US Senator Barry M. Goldwater had this to say about the Religious Right in his country: “Mark my word: if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know; I've tried to deal with them.” Church and State are to be kept separate for a good reason. They are the death of freedom and truth when acting in combination: "conversions" at swordpoint in the days of Emperor Constantine and Church-blessed crusades in historical and modern times have proved this.

The Church was never meant to uphold the status quo of any society. Stability brings stagnation and stagnation breeds death and evil. Pre-Revolutionary France bears witness to this: the Church aristocracy colluded with their secular counterparts in keeping the population in a state of semi-slavery, reaping the benefits of excruciating tax burdens placed upon the peasants as well as the bourgeoisie. It was in the name of the Church that knights of Europe found an excuse to go and wage Crusades in the “Holy Land” – a concept that still sees people thinking of Jerusalem as an earthly city, a political entity, instead of a heavenly concept to draw the metaphysical pilgrim through this crazy reality to a better place.

George W. Bush’s administration initially treated the war in Iraq as a Crusade, even though the American Constitution provides strictly for the separation of Church and State.

Any attempt by western powers to interfere with Arab or Muslim affairs is viewed through the twin lenses of Christian Crusades and European colonialism. That, more than anything, is the contemporary legacy of the Crusades and one which will continue to afflict relations between Islam and Christianity for a long time to come. http://atheism.about.com/od/crusades/a/crusadesviews_4.htm

A church that upholds the status quo is guilty of the same as the Protestant and Catholic Church in Nazi Germany: “Historically the German Evangelical Church viewed itself as one of the pillars of German culture and society, with a theologically grounded tradition of loyalty to the state.” http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206. The Catholic Church initially protested the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, but both churches remained largely silent during the war. “After 1945, the silence of the church leadership and the widespread complicity of "ordinary Christians" compelled leaders of both churches to address issues of guilt and complicity during the Holocaust—a process that continues internationally to this day.”

Is it not the church’s business to show society an alternative to the solutions that politicians offer to today’s problems and every man’s struggles? Look at it this way: Let’s say two German workers, call them Hans and Fritz, had the same job. Hans was a cheerful bloke: he enjoyed a stable family life, had a hearty appetite, loved his job. Fritz, on the other hand, was psychotic and fearful, couldn’t relate to his family, couldn’t sleep and hated his job. Now we would be quick to say that Hans was the well-adjusted one and Fritz the one in need of psychiatric help. Until we learn that they are both Auschwitz extermination camp guards. This can be extrapolated to today’s society: who is really ill? The person who fits into this society, or the misfit who is in need of psychiatry – but is actually showing a healthy reaction to a sick reality? Is Church guilty of supporting this society and the political powers that control it, or is it helping its members by equipping them with a solid set of values and views in this strange reality, keeping their focus on a world beyond this tragic one?

The big bully (the “Nazi”, if you wish) today all over the world is all-pervasive materialism and consumerism, a society where you are out of place if you are not conspicuously spending money on all sorts of toys, or where you cheat, lie (also called “advertise”) and steal to get what you want. Two years ago there was a programme on NZTV about the rise of informal churches such as the house church to which my family and I belong. A leader of the mega church in Auckland had a number of criticisms aimed against any gathering of believers other than a formal church format and used the programme as a platform for plugging his own brand of church, couching it in frighteningly familiar commercial terms.

"We package it [the Christian message] in a contemporary manner so that it's relevant to the modern person.” He markets the mega church as, "A church that's progressive", a church that's worth "investing your money in". Now I wonder: by “modern person,” does he mean “thoughtless consumer”? Does he, by implication, mean a church that unquestioningly embraces today's materialism? A church to "invest" in so that they can erect a huge building and install state of the art PA systems, lights etc. to put on a show for the masses? A church where the orchestration of the masses ("If I don't raise my hands when I sing in church there's something wrong with me") is more important than the questions and issues that the individual is grappling with?

I remember when I was a praise & worship leader in the Big Church how our PA system just wouldn't work one Sunday. I clearly felt led to do something different that day after we'd prayed about it - I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but it was something to do with the praise & worship team being part of the congregation instead of being out there on the stage. I told one of the leaders about it and he nearly frothed at the mouth, saying "Don't come with that super-spiritual stuff - you've just got to make the system work!" And yes, the PA system eventually worked, but I couldn't help feeling that we had missed something important that day, something about being flexible to the Word of God, following his agenda rather than the structured format of a human imposed order of proceedings for the sake of the preacher’s super circus show.

Does the mega church leader mean a church with a corporate image, like so many other organisations? The term "corporate" has taken on a frightening meaning in this church with its leadership structures mirroring those of a big corporation with CEOs and tiered management, when Christ has expressly spoken out against the human way of lording it over minions in the way that worldly institutions administer their organisations. There is also such emphasis on team playing and group work at the workplace, in schools and in society today that we are in danger of neglecting personal responsibility and accountability in favour of fitting in lest we become "losers" bullied by preachers with super-spiritual quick-fixes.

Or does he mean a church that questions the assumptions that have been made about the Bible and the way we justify the accumulation of wealth; a church that does not believe in the persecution of homosexuals, the invasion of "non-Christian" countries in the name of the monstrosity of Christian nationalism and ignorance of the plight of the downtrodden and the "losers" of this world – caring for them rather than converting them? A church that challenges, instead of turning a blind eye to or supporting the big bullies of our day: the corporations and unscrupulous politicians?

The big, modern church seems to attract many people, but it would be interesting to do a study on how long, on average, members stay – what the member turnover is, to use a lovely corporate term. Many serious, deep-thinking people are leaving the church because they have become disillusioned with organised religion which has no spirit or love. Those who remain are fearful of the secularising influence of science and popular culture, or bold in completely the wrong way: publicly taking a stand against homosexuality, abortion and Darwinism or whatever worldly trend is current, but without any real clue as to what we are standing for.

One of the most important messages I ever heard in church was the following: “Two men set up hamburger stands in a city. The one is Christian and the other isn't. As Christians, which hamburger stand should we support?” Now many people would super-spiritually think it should be the Christian one, because being Christian automatically makes it better, right? But here’s the answer: it’s the one that sells the best burgers! And I think that if we call ourselves Christian we will make damn sure that the burger, or music, or service or any aspect of our secular life that we offer, will be the best, will draw people to Christ through the spirit in which we do things: going the extra mile, forgiving and getting on with life, turning the other cheek, to name a few.

We need to take a long, hard look at our Christian community and honestly ask, “Is there anything good, wholesome and attractive about us? Are we displaying a lifestyle that shows life (note: not material goods) in abundance? Or are we a cosy little subculture patting each other on the backs and condemning outsiders who are different from and think differently to us?”

What do we stand for, and what would attract people to our faith? Not cosy church-based coffee clubs, not Jesus-music of the emotive type. Brian McLaren (http://www.brianmclaren.net/) in an open letter to worship leaders, says,

A popular worship song I've heard in many venues says that worship is ‘all about You, Jesus.’ But apart from that line, it really feels like worship and Christianity in general have become “all about me, me, me,” or maybe "us, us, us" (where us = privileged spiritual consumers in the Western religious industrial complex).

Neither will a church building attract the needy to our faith, no matter how coolly modern or authentically antique the architecture is. What will give the breakthrough is being the authentic Jesus Christ in this world. Not the sanitised version of the most down-to-earth Man who ever lived that some Christians are trying to present. My late mother, for example (bless her soul) was convinced that drinking any form of alcohol was strictly taboo and tried to convince me that what was called “wine” in Biblical times was actually more like grape juice. Yet, the wine that Jesus changed water into at the wedding in Kana was of a good vintage! “Grape juice”? This is the real Jesus, the one who smells of earth and sweet heaven, who can laugh thunderously and weep passionately, the one with lightning in his eyes and a carpenter’s touch in his hands.

Somehow I get the idea that Jesus, God in human form, was the most human being that ever walked the earth. Down-to-earth, passionate, with no religious bullshit. He came to do away with all that ritual crap. The only thing that he required ritual-wise was for us to raise a glass of red goodness to remember the full-bodied blood that he shed for us so that we never have to feel ashamed about our weaknesses and stupidity anymore, and to break bread to remember how he was broken for us, died so that we could have the fullness of life through him.

A lovely metaphor for our salvation, our precious gift of new life, can be seen in the enterprising spirit of people in Paraguay living on a landfill: they provide the recycled materials for making violins, cellos – instruments for an entire symphony orchestra to make beautiful music: the “Landfill Harmonic” orchestra. (http://www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie?fref=ts) Is this not at the heart of Christianity: taking that which was deemed useless by the world and turning it in to something meaningful, that brings joy? In Philippians we are encouraged to think on things that are uplifting to the spirit. There is so much in the world that is beautiful and positive – we tend to become fearful about the threats to our faith, instead of boldly looking for the good in everything and every person, turning things that may have been put there for evil purposes into things that can serve the highest good if only we can believe.  It is with this spirit that we need to look for Christian narratives in everything, not just the well-worn sermons in church.

Have you become jaded with the pat answers and quick-fixes of your Christian community? Has Church become a chore, rather than a pleasure, or a bland “me, me” ritual instead of a challenge? Do yourself a favour: pretend that you have never heard of Christ before. Pretend that you have never set foot in a church building, never heard a sermon (don’t even know what it is), never read the Bible. All you have is, deep inside of you, the knowledge that there is something wrong with this world where people abuse and consume, make war and empty promises. Abraham, the father of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic faith set out for a promised land when God called them away from Haran where they were living among Abram’s father’s idolatrous household. Nobody – no preacher or prophet – told Abram (as he was known before God changed his name to Abraham) that what he was surrounded with was wrong, all he had was the voice of God – that quiet, clear voice calling him away to a place unseen and unheard of. A place that he did not get to, nor did generations of his offspring. We are not there yet. But in striving for this land beyond, we are bringing hope and change to this present reality by living not as exploiters and dominators of our world but as temporary custodians who get one chance to do things right before we get given our true destiny. But you must get to that place in the desert, where all the narratives that look for prime position in your life are stilled, where nobody stands between you and God but Jesus Christ himself, so that you can hear his voice.

I know that when we look for the truth, we will find it. But we have to be prepared to lay aside everything that we have accepted blindly in our lives in order to get to that truth. I have said to a friend – a former pupil at the school where I taught in South Africa who, after years of devoted Christianity, became atheist – that getting out of organised religion  is probably his first step towards being a real Christian. Throw out all the old furnishings of your faith – or at least examine all those old habits and motions (the regular Sunday attendance, the formulated prayers, etc.) in the light of the Holy Spirit before you restore it: is it useful? Is it joyful? Will it lead to growth? What would Jesus say about it? Is it perhaps just baggage that serves no purpose?

Perhaps the most insidious, evil piece of baggage is the “Father Christmas/Santa Claus” model that we have of God, which tells us that we need to earn the gift by being a “good little kid.” This is the start of the division between religious robots and “irredeemable” sinners: if you’re a good little kid (or know exactly how to fool everybody) you get rewarded: the gift of Christmas is yours. If you misbehave, you forfeit the gift of salvation. What wicked, deceitful theology! The wonder of the gift of Christ is that it is there for everybody, especially those who know that they have done wrong and that we are and always will be bumbling idiots in our efforts to please God. Those who don’t are lifeless graves, cold and passionless but have managed to fool people into thinking that they are “good Christians.” This is just one example of this kind of superstition – nay, heresy – that has crept into the church.

More difficult, perhaps, are the assumptions we have gone along with, because of what the church and other people have said about gay marriage, women’s rights, defending sexual abuse of children and spousal abuse. Telling a woman whose husband is killing her to “submit” to him, or telling a child who has been sexually abused by a parent to repent of their sins flies in the face of reason.

Another assumption is that our past life, pre-Christ, is all evil and never to be revisited. Being followers of Christ means using some of the old and some of the new: we take on a new truth about the universe when Christ enters our lives, but we also have experiences and wisdom we have picked up along the way to the cross, which we can now bring forth for the glory of God. We are given a part of the picture for our lives, the rest we fill in and enrich with bits of reality that we pick up along the way. Look for God in unexpected places, not just in church or in the Bible. Reading Carlos Castaneda’s books before I rededicated my life to Christ, on the old Mesoamerican Indian wizard Don Juan, taught me a number of truths about life and the universe. One of these is that we look for and find confirmation of our thoughts and ideas in the world around us – the hooter of a car, the whistle of a kettle, a chance remark from a passer-by can confirm ideas or thoughts we have at a particular time, almost as God used a donkey to speak to Balaam. Another lesson he teaches in Journey to Ixtlan is where he warns that on the journey of the person in search of wisdom, there will be many people who say they are walking the same road to Ixtlan; but in the end the voyager is alone, responsible for his own route there. This experience is also the story of my Christian walk: I have had to turn away from Christians who have tried to convince me that their way of worshiping God is the only way, or that my girlfriend (who is now my wife) is going to trip me up on my Christian walk, claiming literally to be “the voice of the Lord!” in an intense phone conversation attempting to dissuade me from pursuing a relationship that has been the most rewarding and challenging of my entire life. Every time I had to search in my own bosom for the answer; every time I had to shake my head sadly and part ways with my fellow traveller.

Today I am walking with a very small number of people who are also on that road, but in the end there is only my individual path which is my responsibility to find by working out my own salvation with “fear and trembling.” Not the fear of the recipient of the one mina (or talent) who buried it because he was too afraid to gamble with it, too afraid to step outside the norms of his cosy Christian subculture, but the awful knowledge that I have been charged with finding God and promoting him everywhere I possibly can through my actions and my words. And by “words” I don’t mean shoving my religion down people’s throats, but that by what I say I respect other people’s sincerely held beliefs, being sensitive to what God wants me to say in every situation, sprinkling my words with the salt of life experience, being totally real with people from all walks of life without using religious rhetoric which turns into “bla-bla” gobbledegook in the ears of unbelievers anyway.

This is not an advert for a new church format, much as I am a firm supporter of house church. Rather, it is a call for you, the serious follower of Christ to re-examine your values wherever you worship, to encourage you with this knowledge: There is a new generation of the followers of Christ dawning. They will burst forth with fountains of living water in the most unlikely places. Perhaps you are one? Then boldly plant yourself in this parched world like a sprayer in one of those camouflaged irrigation systems, ready to refresh this world with a surprising new outburst of God’s Spirit when the time comes. Inject your Facebook page with frothy good humour and uplifting repartee; have a pint in the pub with your good mates; be the first to crack a bawdy joke in the workplace – but be strangely different from those who don’t know Christ: when others gossip, defend the victim. When your colleagues complain and gripe, give them a friendly chiding and show them how to go the extra mile. When people spit in your face, turn the other cheek. This is showing the character of Jesus to the world. A WWJD bracelet just won’t crack it: that character has to dwell in you, be joyfully part of you and overflow into the world as naturally as water from a deep fountain that wells up from a peace and joy too deep and strange for words.

I leave you with the beautiful lyrics of “Be ye Glad” by Michael Kelly Blanchard:

So be like lights on the rim of the water,
giving hope in a storm sea of night.
Be a refuge amidst the slaughter,
for these fugitives in their flight.
For you are timeless and part of a puzzle.
You are winsome and young as a lad.
And there is no disease or no struggle,
that can pull you from God, be ye glad.

Oh, be ye glad, be ye glad,
Every debt that you ever had
Has been paid up in full by the grace of the Lord,
Be ye glad, be ye glad, be ye glad.

The red herring of Satanism: the Beast in "The Lord of the Flies"

One of the greatest deceptions by the Enemy is the sensationalism around devil-worship or "satanism." It is another way of lulling nominal Christians into complacency: "I don't worship Satan, who is the embodiment of evil, therefore I must be good." It draws that attention away from the much more subtle way in which people are, in effect, worshiping the enemy through their pride - especially religious pride. It is here that he wears his sanctimonious mask, where he uses the name of Christ as a banner under which to persecute, judge and murder and bring disgrace to this name.

We have nothing to fear from Hell. The gates of death and corruption were broken apart and all the prisoners have been set free. Nothing that emerges from its depth - no demon, no spirit, no dark thought, no satanic music, no hatred from my fellow man - has any hold or authority over those who have been set free by the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. We are in God's Kingdom on Earth, walking free among the prisoners of this world, this human condition. These prisoners are people who have been deceived into believing that they are mere mortals who have to make a heaven here on earth for themselves.

To be sure; there really is a devil, a fallen angel who corrupted creation and man when he fell from grace. But blaming our misdeeds on him is giving him far too much credit. Rather, it is the fallen nature of every person, from the day that Eve and Adam listened to the lie of the serpent, that is the chief cause of the woes of this world. And sure; the extreme sensationalised form of Satanism is a dreadful thing to practice or even to dabble in, but it is too easy to blame Satanists for the ills of the world, to get bug-eyed about "Satanic" lyrics and "gnostic" messages in music and cinema when we don't have to examine our own pride which causes us to gossip, to slander and hate our fellow humans.

In The Lord of the Flies the boy Simon correctly identifies the Beast as the evil living within our own breast, not a foe that we need to hunt down out of fear: we might just be crucifying Christ again in the process, as Simon, who was the embodiment of spiritual good in LOTF, was killed by the fearful boys in their ritual.

It is in this story that the Christ metaphor is best illustrated and expressed. Simon is not a strong hunter like Jack, the antagonist of this story. He is a dreamer, a philosopher who loves sitting in his secret spot and losing himself in the beauty of the island upon which the boys have been stranded. Neither is he a logician like Piggy, the boy who is always looking for rational explanations yet who is also frightened by the "Beastie" and the danger that Jack poses.

But Simon has a strength that no other boy on the island has: the strength of spirit. The other boys respond to fear: the "littluns" speak of a "Beastie" that they have caught glimpses of in the night, which makes the older boys uneasy. Jack, the fearless hunter, is just as afraid as the other boys, but he uses this fear to lord it over the others: he would protect them against the beast if they made him chief; they had to worship and bring sacrifices to appease the beast. Simon, however, sees clearly that there is no external threat - rather, the beast is something living within each of them. That is the beast that really is to be feared: mankind's capacity for doing evil. Not only that, but also his capacity for blaming his misdeeds on something outside of him - claiming "The Devil made me do it" instead of taking responsibility for his sins.

These "sins" are evident early in the story: Ralph, the "nice" boy is the first to tease Piggy for his nickname; Roger is only constrained from real violence by the still-present voices of the authorities of civilisation when he throws stones at the "littluns," not by any innate goodness; the response to the little boy who is lost in the fire is eerily reminiscent of Abel's response to God when Cain is murdered, that he is not his brother's keeper.

Golding, the author of the book, saw in the war what humans can do to one another, saw the cold political evil of war. It is for this reason that he introduces the dead airman, representative of an outside world in the throes of battle, who parachutes onto the island and gives the boys the fright of their lives. Finally here they have "proof": half-seen in the darkness, the parachute billowing in the wind on the hilltop with the ravaged corpse still attached is their beast. But it is Simon who defeats the beast in his mind - first his monologue with the dead pig's head and then when he is the one who examines the airman closely and realises who the "beast" really is: an emissary of the eternal war that man is waging against man, paying for his sin through death.

What ensues is a combination of two Biblical events: Simon comes down the mountain with the good news like Moses with the stone tablets while the Israelites have fallen into idolatry. Like the Israelites, the boys at the feast are engaged in a primeval ritualistic dance, swept up in a frenzied chant about killing the beast. Simon appears and is mistaken for the "beast." He is murdered in the boys' barbaric ritual. Just as in the Christ story where the evil of the world is defeated on the cross, the wind blows the parachute off the island at that moment when Simon dies, ridding the island of its "beast."

After the scene of Simon's death, Ralph comes to the realisation of his guilt, his complicity in Simon's murder with the other boys. The other boys, however, are in denial, saying they weren't really part of the ritual. This is reminiscent of recent mob killings in the USA, for example, where participants shift the blame onto others in the group, never taking personal responsibility.

Jack keeps the fear of the beast alive in order to hold sway over the other boys. After all, he is their protector and fearless provider. In the same way, world leaders from all ages have sought to quell the idea that Christ's simple gift of redemption is real, that the foe within has been defeated, because fear is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of any leader. The aftermath of 9/11 testifies to this, where the Bush administration used the people's fear to put "anti-terrorist" measures into place that diminished their freedom in the name of Homeland Security. Going back further, Hitler's paranoia that he instilled in the German people of a Jewish conspiracy behind Germany's downfall was a key factor in his rise to power. Then there was the West's bogeyman of Communism. The list of popular fears for the sake of political power goes on.

Even worse is the religious use of fear in order to keep control. Fear of Hell has long been the province of religious leaders whose dead religion has had no power to attract proselytes to Christianity. Christ himself, however, makes mention of Hell only once, and this he does in order to illustrate the consequences in store for those who neglect the plight of the poor and the needy - note that it is not a place reserved for homosexuals and prostitutes in this parable of Lazarus and the rich man. It is also not the place where you go if you're not a "born-again Christian" in the 20th century sense of the word.

Today we have the fearful attitudes against homosexuality and gay marriage that seek to divide the human race into "Us and Them" camps: pro-marriage equity equals "un-Christian"; "Christian" equals condemning homosexuals as loudly as possible. Anything that doesn't look "Christian" or doesn't proclaim itself loudly to be so is treated with distrust and paranoia: cinema or art with "gnostic" messages, music that can be played backwards containing "satanic" messages. Straining out gnats but swallowing the dead camel of the lack of mercy and compassion for a humanity that doesn't know any better.

This is the enemy's greatest deception: making Christians who display godliness but have deprived themselves of its power. It is their fearfulness that is holding them back from engaging with the world on any real terms, calling things evil which God has not, ostensibly uncovering the machinations of Satan by pointing accusing fingers at cinematographers, musicians and artists who are addressing the "big questions" in life . They are the ones who fear Satanism because they don't understand this one simple truth: the gates of Hell, the powers of evil, have been totally neutralised. A light has been switched on in the darkness and there is nothing that the darkness can do to extinguish it. They are the ones who are chasing the red herring of satanism because the enemy has given them a bogeyman to revile, instead of examining themselves for the evil which lurks in all of us.

Metaphor? The Jesus metaphor

So you thought metaphors were things your language teachers liked to add to their torture of literature for your benefit. The truth is, though: we think in metaphors. This literary phenomenon in which one thing (usually an abstract, sometimes unknown concept) is experienced in terms of another - something familiar which exhibits characteristics of the concept -  has throughout a number of decades gained recognition in the realm of cognitive psychology, where people with depression can, for instance, identify with a lump of coal. How big is the role that metaphors play in our mental life? And is there a basis to the claim that the metaphor of Christ is one of the most powerfully prevalent metaphors of all history?

In our everyday speech we use metaphors without being aware of them. We hear expressions such as "seeing through" someone, "planting a seed" of doubt, etc. But metaphor is not restricted to colouring our everyday language with their conscious use. Some writers speak of so-called "dead" metaphors as those that have passed from conscious use to being an integral part of language. These include metaphors like the "leg" of a table. In this way, metaphors enrich our language, by using a familiar object to name or describe an unfamiliar one by analogy. Speaking of a tables's "leg" seems much more apt than calling it a "support." People use 1.8 novel metaphors and 4.08 frozen ("dead") metaphors per minute of discourse. It seems, then, that without metaphor one would have to resort to pure abstraction which would only present a "Meccano copy" of the real world in our minds, instead of concrete, malleable images that we can stretch, roll into balls and tennis around while chatting.

Today we have sophisticated verbal metaphors which have remained in place for centuries, for instance "The pen is mightier than the sword." The power of this metaphor lies in the similarity in shape of the two objects, the pen and sword, as well as the total dissimilarity in their function (the dissemination of ideas vs. killing opponents) and comparison of their success in achieving their common purpose: conviction and conquest. The metaphor of Christ speaks to us today through the pen - metaphorically here the arts, specifically the modern films like The Matrix and Shawshank Redemption which go deeper than pure entertainment and have been vilified for their "Gnostic" messages by fearful Christian commentators such as the makers of the documentary Hollywood's War on God. 

Evolution of metaphor

How do metaphors come into being and what role do they play in cognition? The linguist Giambattista Vico saw poetic language as the original form of expression of humankind, emerging before conscious rationalism. The latter ushered in the growing powers of abstraction which resulted in the dwindling power of the imagination, which had expressed itself through myths and fables. The anthropologist Levi-Strauss came to the conclusion that myths are not "thought up" but are natural utterances of the human classification system of reality. Myths and fables can then be expressions of what Haskell refers to as "a common sense [which is] judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race," which express proverbs and folk wisdom with meanings common to all people.  

Primary process thinking and metaphor

Brain-damaged patients have an awareness of something which their brains should, technically, "ignore." This happens to patients who have been hypnotised against pain, for instance, but are yet aware of the pain through a "dissociated cognitive structure," the "hidden observer." This happens because of non-conscious processes in the brain which influence conscious cognitions and responses. 

The process of the transference of non-conscious cognition into conscious is found in the experience of the organic chemist Kekule who was struggling to discover the molecular structure of benzene. While wrestling with this problem, Kekule fell into an exhausted sleep in which he dreamed about dancers holding hands in a circle. When he awoke from the dream, he realised that the traditional metaphor of organic compounds as chains of atoms was insufficient to account for the structure of benzene and that a new metaphor, that of a ring structure, had to be used in this case.

Kekule's experience seems to be dramatic proof of metaphors as the only way in which to construct our realities: the chemist's deductive thinking had exhausted the old metaphor of molecular chains and a new metaphor had to be birthed via non-conscious processes, providing a whole new paradigm for hydrocarbon research. 

Going back further into the atom and theories of describing the atom, one finds an interesting shift of metaphors that seem to have exhausted themselves before deductive processes. The first encounter with the atom (from the Greek word atomos meaning "indivisible") that any science pupil has, is that of a little ball of matter forming itself into chains and clusters known as molecules. Later one learns about the Bohr model, analogous to a solar system: a central nucleus with orbiting electrons. Already in his time, however, Bohr knew that the atom was more complicated than this: some electrons describe a figure of eight instead of orbiting and, even more perplexing, an electron can be in more than one place at any given time! The list of paradoxes goes on: light is both wave and particle, Schroedinger's cat, to name a few.

Now, for these facts, nobody has found an adequate metaphor to explain them in terms of everyday experience. They are facts we have to accept because deductive reasoning from the observable facts "tells us so." This could lead to one questioning the nature of reality itself - that reality is beyond human comprehension unless one shifts the paradigm of thinking into the realm of the spiritual.

Metaphor and religion

Paradoxes such as the ones we find in quantum physics exist in the Christian doctrine as well. One learns that Jesus Christ is at once God and the Son of God, for instance. The writings of the prophets speak mostly about the coming of the Messiah (Christ) in the form of metaphors. Christ himself spoke in parables or metaphorical teachings. Many of his parables begin with "The Kingdom of God is like..." whereupon he proceeds to set up a kind of cognitive resonance in the minds of his listeners by juxtaposing his ideas with certain concrete elements: a hand to the plough, a mustard seed and a mountain, wolves and sheep. 

There is a tension between the "aesthetic" (the "entertaining" part) and "cognitive" role (the "lesson" that it wants to teach) of metaphor which gives the power to convey the truth. A good example of this is when the prophet Nathan confronted king David after the latter had sent Uriah to the front to be killed so that David could have the widow Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12). Nathan used a (at first glance) rather obscure parable told as a story to the king about an act of injustice. When David became enraged at the unscrupulous man in the parable, Nathan pointed out that he, King David was that man - to which David immediately repented brokenly. Had the prophet confronted the king directly on the matter, David could have denied his evil intentions quite comfortably. But Nathan's parable brought him face to face with his own conscience via a cunning metaphorical detour.

In the above parable, one can see what some call "Cognitive Mapping": the target (David's misdeed) is mapped onto the base (parable), the elements as close to a one-to-one correspondence as possible: David/the rich man; Uriah/the poor man; David's lust/the traveller; Bathsheba/the poor man's ewe lamb; David's wives/the rich man's sheep. Slaughtering the poor man's ewe lamb to feed the king's visitor would be what Freud would refer to as the "overdetermination" of the sign: it suggests simultaneously David's act of adultery with Bathsheba and (what amounts to) the murder of Uriah. 

Sacrifice and metaphor

Ritual sacrifice of animals and humans is a phenomenon that has been with mankind throughout the millennia. In most cases it is a way of appeasing a deity or deities for some real or possible wrongdoing or to gain favour from them. The Aztecs, over and above the ritual sacrifices of animals and very often of humans, had to let a drop of blood fall on the ground from their own bodies each day. Greek mythology tells us in Homer's Iliad that King Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter for favourable conditions for his navy to set sail for Troy. In Roman civilisation,  "Prayer was almost invariably accompanied by some form of offering or sacrifice. This did not necessarily involve the ritual slaughter of an animal, as long as the offering represented life in some form." (http://www.the-romans.co.uk/prayer.htm)

This bloodletting seems to be an ingrained, hard-wired part of the human religious experience and has only relatively recently become outmoded, mostly through the intervention of a more civilised set of values spread globally through the "Christian" values of European colonisers. 

Why did the concept of ritual sacrifice change through the coming of Christianity? If we examine both the Judaic roots of Christianity and the Roman roots of civilisation, we will see how the sacrifice of Christ on the cross negates the need for this practice. In Old Testament times the Israelite nation had to bring sacrifices before God as atonement for their sins. On the day of atonement (Lev. 16:20-22) the priest was given the command to take two goats and to confess the sins of the nation over their heads. Lots were drawn and one goat was slaughtered as atonement (foreshadowing the offering of Jesus on the cross) while the other was set free in the desert as symbol of man's freedom from sin and its resultant punishment. When Jesus Christ came to earth, he was said to be the only person without sin, spotless in the sight of God. He is also called the "Lamb of God," led to the slaughter as the Passover lamb of the Jewish festival is traditionally slaughtered. Even though he was totally blameless, he was the one who atoned for the sin of all humankind, a burden carried by the human race since the birth and fall of humankind - in Judeo-Christian mythology, the fall of Adam and Eve. Everyone who believes this and accepts the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is set free from sin, without the need for ritual sacrifice ever again. 

For this purpose, Jesus Christ left behind a powerful metaphor by which we can remember his sacrifice: wine representing the blood that he shed on the cross and broken bread for his body that was broken for all humankind. This symbolic act, the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine, is what reaches out to both "civilised" people and primitive African tribes who have been slaughtering an animals for ritual purposes; it is a metaphor that speaks to all of us. As C.S. Lewis put it; "It is only Xianity which compels a high brow like me to partake of a ritual blood feast, and also compels a central African convert to attempt an enlightened code of ethics."

This concept of sacrifice by proxy was eventually adopted by the Romans when Constantine made Christianity the state religion (something never intended by Christ) and became associated with "civilisation", which is an idea always associated with Rome. Therefore, blood and other sacrifices have come to be seen as "uncivilised," when in reality they are un-Christian (Rome was civilised and bloody before it became Christian), and have become outmoded in many parts of the world. 

Perhaps this is why the Christ metaphor resonates with something deep within us: throughout the ages the human race has had the need for redemption through sacrifice. The coming of Christ and his sacrifice on the cross has resonated throughout the world, whether we are aware of it or not. This is why this metaphor keeps surfacing in many contemporary films that go a bit deeper than you run-of-the-mill action or romance movie, ones that seek to answer, as the Wachowsky brothers (directors of The Matrix) put it, the "big questions." In many of these films we see one person sacrificing himself for the common good or for the redemption of humankind. We will examine some of these films in more depth in later posts.

Perhaps most appropriate for this study is the saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword." To the point here: it looks as though contemporary art (the pen) has succeeded where contemporary churches (the sword, which is trying to slay real and imagined opponents to doctrine) have failed in keeping the idea of Christ's redemption alive in a real way that contemporary audiences can relate to. We shall examine the power of this Idea (of Christ's redemption) in the post, "Indestructible ideas in V for Vendetta."

Indestructible Ideas in "V for Vendetta"

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - Holy Bible, NIV - John 1:1-5

[after a hail of gunfire doesn't stop V]
Creedy: Die! Die! Why won’t you die?… Why won’t you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
- V for Vendetta

According to Neil Postman, Aldous Huxley in Brave New World warned that, unlike the dire prediction of Orwell's 1984 where the truth would be concealed from the public, the truth would in fact one day be hidden in plain sight but swamped by an ocean of trivia. We can see this happening on TV today, where news broadcasts are not much more than entertainment: if a story does not make good TV, it does not make TV at all. Nevertheless, we still find in this ocean of trumped-up talent shows, blandly commercial music, stale rehashed sitcoms and macho action man movies, a few islands of truth that compel attention and stimulate thoughtful dialogue. These are the ideas, the "answers to the big questions" according to the Wachowski brothers, the creators of The Matrix.

"The Word" in the passage from the Gospel of John seems interchangeable with "The Idea." Jesus may have been crucified and killed, but the Idea of the Messiah, the Lamb of God who was sacrificed to bring light and forgiveness to the world is an idea - and ideas cannot be killed. Regardless whether you believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected in the flesh on the third day after he was crucified or not; the idea of a passionately loving Creator who came to earth in human form, living and enjoying life as one of us, bringing a message of hope and redemption to a humanity crushed under the weight of its own pride and then being sacrificed for the lowliest of all wrongdoers, is a beautiful story and an utterly compelling idea.

So compelling, in fact, that the idea has become cloaked in many stories as we have seen in films like Shawshank Redemption and The Matrix (see previous posts). Some of these guises may have sought to mislead viewers into believing in a false messiah, but they have done the original idea of Christ a big favour: they have kept it alive in the minds of people who are seeking the steady ground of ideas and answers in an ocean of trivia.

In V for Vendetta, we see the indestructible V as the idea of revolution in an age where Britain is ruled by a fanatical religious class with a rabid dictator who raves against homosexuals, Muslims and other groups who do not fit into his "Christian" world view. V represents the petit recit, the "little voice" in Postmodernist philosophy that will always rise up against the grand recits, the powers that rule and control the day. He is personified by Guy Fawkes, a man reviled for his plan of destruction of British Parliament but who is here celebrated for his courage in standing up against a government in the name of his ideology.

In the end of the film the man behind the mask dies anonymously (his body is blown to smithereens by his own explosives), but not before he has disseminated his idea: thousands upon thousands of people don the mask and "become" V as they march to witness the destruction of the Houses of Parliament.

In the same way, Jesus Christ died after he had lived and was witnessed by many, touching thousands of lives and thereby spreading the Idea after his death. The supernatural ripping apart of the temple curtain of the Holiest of Holies which only the high priest visited once a year (with a rope around his ankle so that he could be pulled out in case he was struck dead by the presence of God!) is highly symbolic: that which used to be the preserve of the religious elite now belonged to everybody. Everyone who remembered Jesus when they broke bread and drank wine would be one of his. He goes so far as, after his death, breathing his spirit into his followers at the Pentecost so that they could, in effect, become him.

The historical churches, however, started cloaking that Idea in layer upon layer of dogma and eventually downright lies by bending the words of men who wrote the Gospels and Epistles of the Bible out of shape to such an extent that we have the same situation in the so-called Church as Jesus had with the religious order of his time, the Pharisees: leaders who place burdens and condemnation on "sinners" but don't lift a finger to help them, actors in their own TV shows who care only for their own power and personal gain. The Idea seemed to die, smothered by the weight of hassocks and fancy robes, drowned in the clamour of money lenders like the Medici and suffocated by the stench of incense burned under somber incantations in Latin, making it the property of the religious elite again. It is in the name of this dead religion that people who should know better are condemning homosexuals, Muslims and everybody who doesn't fit their narrow definition of "Christian." The "Unity through Faith" slogan in V for Vendetta rings as hollow as the liturgy of the traditional churches which has lost its meaning by losing the Spirit, the Idea behind it.

But the Idea cannot die. It will always surface - sometimes in the most unlikely places like, yes, the secular cinema theatre where V, Neo, Andy Dufresne, Aragorn and many others show glimpses of the greatest Idea ever.

Simple faith vs. Obfuscatory oratory

The parables of Jesus were simple stories that brought home the truths about God’s Kingdom, in the face of the sanctimonious hot air spouted by the religious leaders of his time, thus providing a spiritual “prison break” for the ordinary people. 

The Original Hippie
Contrast all the politicking and chicanery of the institutionalised church with the simplicity of the faith that Jesus represents: In Luke 9, when a man wanted to follow him, ‘Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”’ He was the original hippie! He did not have a house of his own, but was a wanderer devoid of material possessions. He preached a life of simplicity, telling the crowd not to worry about what they will wear or where their food will come from. When he addressed a crowd, it was usually outdoors as he did in the Sermon on the Mount, not in an ornate cathedral or marvel of modern architecture. He was seen as a scoundrel by the Establishment of the time – very much like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings who, even though he was the next chosen king, was a Ranger, a man who slept under the stars and helped keep the little folk safe, yet was distrusted by people who thought they knew better.

Instead of the flowery prose and heavy eloquence of the Rabbis of his time, Jesus taught in parables, simple stories which illustrated eternal truths, amazing those whom he taught, helping them understand God’s kingdom much better than the Pharisees could have hoped to. This could have only been viewed with suspicion by this group: keeping people ignorant keeps them controllable and in awe of displays of obfuscatory oratory. This principle was seen in the Catholic Church which kept all its scripture, yes, these simple parables of Jesus, in Latin, which could not be understood by the common people, but kept them in awe – not of a humble, loving God, but a wrathful one whose mysterious teachings could only (conveniently) be understood by a chosen few.

Should we perhaps be looking at all good literature as a parable of human and eternal truths? If we truly believe in the supremacy of God’s Truth we should not be threatened by the truths posed in films like The Matrix and The Truman Show that challenge us to question our beliefs and assumptions. We should rather see them as opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue with a world that is looking for answers to the big questions of life.

Jesus, Andy Dufresne and the spiritual prison break

Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption provides an intellectual “prison break” for his fellow inmates, once again demonstrating Christ’s commission to set the prisoners free from their institutions. 

The spiritual prison break

Andy Dufresne sought to bring knowledge to his fellow inmates in order to uplift them, help them to have something to fall back upon and strengthen them when they left prison. The key moment in the film regarding this is the shot where the prisoners break through a wall of their institution in order to expand the existing library, the symbolism here very obviously that of a prison break representing new freedom, the freedom of the mind, the intellect. In the end the master of the institution, Warden Norton, threatens to plunge the prison back into its pre-enlightened darkness if Andy does not cooperate with his money-laundering schemes: “And the library? Gone... sealed off, brick by brick. We'll have us a little book barbecue in the yard. They'll see the flames for miles. We'll dance around it like wild Injuns!” Like Warden Norton who has no interest in uplifting the prisoners, seeking only their dumb compliance to the institution, the “Church” as an institution has failed the commission of the true upliftment and liberation of the human spirit, keeping bums on the seats while clone-like congregations listen to arcane, unquestioned preaching and go through religious motions that bear scant relevance to their lives.

Jesus Christ came to earth to set us free from prison: not a physical prison, but the prison that has been created in our minds. Anyone who thinks that the freedom that Christ brought is a physical one would be very disillusioned upon examining early Church history: the foremost propagators of the faith like Paul and Peter were frequently thrown into a physical prison. Rather, it is for the freedom of the human spirit from the human condition and from human institutions of the mind and soul that Christ came to dwell among us. He lived as one of us, experiencing the human condition with its joys and sorrows with us. He showed us a hope beyond this world and then died on the cross so that we could inherit his spirit and experience his freedom completely. This he did by changing our hearts of prison stone into hearts of flesh and blood, becoming his living ambassadors to this world. We are Jesus through partaking in his spirit and, like Andy Dufresne in his prison, we have to have a walk and a talk that gives fresh hope and knowledge to a world that is sinking into prison darkness.

Matthew 25:34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Why would we visit people in prison? Why did Christ not mention “hospital”? Prison implies guilt for a crime: we are all guilty until set free by Christ. It is then our job as those set free by Christ to visit those still bound by their guilt to show them the hope beyond the prison walls of the human condition. We see prisoners all around us every day, people who are bound by this condition, by our fallen nature. From the everyday reminders, the drudgery of work and school, to the evil of which people are capable on a personal and a global scale, nobody can really say that life, on the whole, is great. We see people hurt by the metaphorical roadside, people robbed of the truth and of the fullness and freedom we have in Christ. Are we going to preach judgment and condemnation at them, give them cold comfort with platitudes from the Bible, “placebos in the form of easy answers, ‘try hard’ sermons and the latest ‘get rich’ formulas” instead of dealing with “the ugly and messy relational process of meeting people’s real needs” (in Johnson and Van Vonderen's The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse) or will we sit down and experience life with them, just as Jesus did for us? Will we take them to the "brood of vipers" that is the materialistic, performance driven church of today, or will we take them to the house of healing, the centre of Christ's uncompromising, unconditional love as the good Samaritan did? Will we, by being Jesus to these people, show them hope and true freedom, just as Jesus did for us, or will we judge and condemn them because of their sexual preference or the type movies they watch or the kind of music that they listen to?

“Setting the captives free” is always equated with setting people free from their captivity to sin. Visiting someone in prison could then be equated to visiting someone in their sin – that is, being with them when they are in their “unsaved” state, experiencing the human condition right there with them and being a friend to them. Not someone with a Gideon’s Bible in the back pocket and a “Jesus Saves” agenda, but being Jesus for that person: sitting down and having a drink with them, laughing with them, crying with them. Maybe we should, like Andy Dufresne, have that invisible cloak that shields us from the despair of the human condition, but stop pretending that we are not fellow prisoners of this physical world, show that we are subject to the same fears and desires but with this difference: we are not governed by them; we have hope.