Skip to main content

Socially Acceptable Madnesses

Once, when the world was young, and when I was a holy man held in check by a clergy collar and crucifixed chain, I subscribed to a series of books called, "Luther's Works".   I collected more than fifty of those red-covered volumes, and read them for the translated secrets of the 16th century.  I recall thinking, one day while trying to follow Luther's logic through to his conclusions, that it took almost a physical determination to get my head squeezed into such a shape that it could accommodate 16th century assumptions before the text made sense.  The moment I relaxed, the whole point drifted off.

It happened, a few years later, that I sold the whole lot of those books to a college student for about the price of a pizza.

There is a splendid article in today's New York Times about an exhibition of artifacts from the Dead Sea.  At about the time I traded Luther's Works for a pizza, I tried to read the early translations of some of the Dead Sea scrolls.  Oh, my good Lord!  While it had been necessarily only to wrap my head in stout elastic bands to try to think like a 16th century religious reformer, I practically had to invest in a hand-carved, wooden head vise to try to make sense of what the Essenes of the 1st century B.C. were saying.  I recall thinking that, were I actually to think the way they did, today, there would be no reason not to call me stark, raving mad; that I could as well hear voices, or describe a world filled with critters and assumptions that would make people cross to the other side of the street, were I to tell them.

Another article, on the front page of the Minneapolis Star-Trbune, reports that Minneapolis-St. Paul is among the top ten cities in the United State in attracting well-educated, young people.  It is not an article about racial diversity, but the lead photo is of a gorgeous woman of Asian descent.

Because I was born when the world was young, although after both the Essenes and Martin Luther, I can recall precisely how many Asians and Black classmates I had before I went to college:  none.

That was a different world, too; almost another universe.  I had not had to wear elastic bands or a head vise to live in that world.  Diversity for us had to do with knowing people who went to the Catholic church, and having a neighbor with an Italian name.

Sometimes, when I listen to politicians talk about America as a Christian nation, or to neighbors who assume that God wants them to get rich, I wonder whether there might be an Apple app that would make it easy to wrap myself in the religious or racial assumptions that support their conclusions.

There are no fixed lines between yesterday's reality and today's madness.  An Essene, handing out tracts at our front doors, would make Jehovah's Witnesses or Moonies or Mormons sound almost sane.

We are slow to look very closely at what must be going on to believe what we do believe.  By almost any standard, yesterday's religious assumptions are almost indistinguishable from today's psychological madness.  Instead, we hang on to them, trim them, and try to tame them.  "Oh, we don't really mean what it says!", we say, except when we do.

Wrestled with any angels lately?  Fearful of going to hell?  Do you plan to inhabit a planet all your own when you die?  Has God urged you to run for County Commissioner, or the Church Council?  What was that about the Mark of Cain, again?  Does God really have a Chosen People?

There are socially acceptable madnesses.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more