Religion and "Mending Wall" Thinking: Part One

The kids in the high school in which I teach think it is very, very funny to push the button on their car remotes and make horns beep during class. Then they snicker among themselves as if they have pulled of the most clever -- the most groundbreaking -- of pranks.

My reaction to this is to conjure an obviously fake laugh and to declare -- with painfully evident sarcasm -- how, even after twenty years or teaching high school, this is still funny, peppered in comments about how I can't imagine it ever not being funny and fresh. "Ha, ha, ha!" I intone with the drama of a Puccini tenor... "The car alarm...never, ever gets old..." (At which point the alarms usually shut off and [I could swear this is the case] one or two students seem to turn a little ruddy in the cheeks.)

I can't help feeling the same way when people join the boring chant that condemns "organized religion." I wonder how they can regurgitate the same old cliches as myriad part-time philosophers before them have, and not be embarrassed about it. Yeah, yeah...blah, blah, blah..."organized religion" is awful..."organized religion" causes wars...the world would be better off without "organized religion."

Yep -- it just never gets old. Keep pressing the button...keep making the noise. But how about we really think about this, instead of just chirping the cliches we heard and glommed onto when we were fifteen, as did the fellow in Frost's "Mending Wall":

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well, 

He says again, "Good Fences make good neighbors."

In the poem, the man insists that fences are necessary, even when  they have no discernible purpose. He insists this because he has been instilled with the idea: "Good fences make good neighbors." No other reason. This is what he was told. 

If a farmer keeps goats next to another farmer who grows crops, a fence is a good -- even a necessary -- idea. But...what if both farmers keep sheep? What if, as in the poem, one one neighbor is "all pine and [the other] apple orchard"? What is the sense of the fence, then? 

So, even as there is some validity to the fact that fences can keep neighbors happy, it does not mean that fences are either universally good or bad. In order to see this, one must actually think things through. But...who wants to work that hard?

With religion, it is easier to look at, for a few examples, The Crusades or at ISIS or at the Inquisition and say: "See! Religion is bad!" These were/are bad things, indisputably. 

But, how about other things? Is organized government bad? Is finding like-minded colleagues bad? Are universities bad? Are all of these things not cradles of the monstrous babies who can grow up into the breakers of worlds and the takers of rights?

Of course not. Religion is just the easier target, because it has become the mantra of the pseudo-intellectual; of the seeker of the ready-made, controversially pre-packaged powerful statement: "Religion is bad..." 

And if we are calling things that cause problems like wars and persecution bad, why don't people call for an end to government? Haven't disputes over borders caused at least as many wars and atrocities as religion? How about money? Money causes wars and cruelty. Why haven't we eliminated money? What about philosophy, in general? Should we call for an end to discussion groups? -- universities?  -- web pages about a particular philosophical premise? -- deep discussions in bars? (Rumor has it, revolutions have begun in bars. And revolutions cause death and suffering...) 

The answer is that they don't call for a ban of these things because the perception is that the benefits of these thing outweigh the problems. In essence, people think that sometimes war is necessary to maintain quality of life; sometimes it is okay to ban immigrants; sometimes it is okay to tell everyone that homosexuality is perfectly normal, or a perfect abomination, depending on the philosophical trends of the time; that it's okay to be filthy rich and not help others...etc... 

But, with religion, we don't seem to want to do this. The hordes of "Mending Wall" philosophers just carry the boilerplate idea into the future: religion is bad. 

Obviously, my point is that this is a foolish generalization. So, as to not bore you with an even longer post, I will do a little question-raising in the next post: Is organized religion really guilty of more bad than good? 

Why We Still Believe in Superman

Superman's first appearance. 

I once, some time ago, mentioned the fact that the MGM lion, in the introduction to the film Ben Hur, doesn't roar because the filmmakers did not want to seem irreverent. This is true. Sure, it may have been driven by MGM's fear of alienating ticket-buyers, but the perception that a roaring lion might be seen as irreverent in the intro to a religiously-based film was still something that came to mind in 1959.

Fast-forward to 2015. Over the last few weeks, I have seen both a killing and a rape in church. Not in real life, of course -- in media. The killing (committed, by the way by the game's hero) was in the game Assassin's Creed: Unity. The rape, in the decidedly mediocre (and historically clueless) TV series Salem.

The fact that these things appear in media of two kinds leads me to conclude that people are just not thinking the way we used to. Being irreverent is no longer a fear (nor is it, if we're being honest, all that exciting now that it has become so run-of-the-mill) in the minds of producers and designers. In short, in the modern film, TV and video game culture, nothing is sacred...

George Reeves, TV's Superman

...except one thing: Superman, who I happened to have encountered again, right after having seen the two pop culture desecrations I mentioned above. As far as I can see, Superman is the only thing American filmmakers still hold sacred.

The other night (behind the times as usual) my family and I watched the movie Man of Steel. (Contrary to what I heard from some of my friends, we thought it was very good.)

Christopher Reeve

Superman is the only comic hero I still have any interest in and his are the only comics I really read as a kid. I was of the perfect generation (ten, when the first came out)  for the Christopher Reeve films, so I have always loved them, as well. Now, my sons also watch them.

We all know about Superman: truth, justice and the (old-fashioned) American way. He's always been a force for ethics; a non-lethal evener of the odds for the downtrodden; a stand-up guy; good to the core.

And it would seem that in an age in which we are constantly barraged with half-baked "conflicted" anti-heroes, Superman is one of the only who is still allowed to be a good, old-fashioned good guy. This reverence is refreshing in a boringly irreverent world.

In my memory, Brandon Routh followed the good-guy mold in 2006's Superman Returns. In the latest incarnation (Henry Cavill -- who I thought was great) is not much different that Reeve or than the guy in the Action Comics issues of the thirties and forties. In fact, not only hasn't anyone dared to write Superman as an anti-hero, but they seem to keep implying (and it isn't hard to connect, what with the powerful guy coming from the sky thing) that he is a "Christ figure" in the literary sense. In the 1978 Richard Donner film, Marlin Brando's Jor-El sends this message to the baby genius Kal-El (Superman to-be):

"They [people of Earth] can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."

In Man of Steel (2013) Clark/Superman, talking to his parish pastor, has a discussion about good and evil, each shot of Superman clearly backgrounded by an image of Jesus in the stained glass over his shoulder. 

And he makes things clear to his "captors"  in the military: 

"You're scared of me because you can't control me. You don't, and you never will. But that doesn't mean I'm your enemy."

Brandon Routh

And we know -- maybe we need to know -- that no one has anything to fear from Superman. (Do we always feel the same about Batman?)

There may be some comic collector out there who can point to an issue in which Superman cheats at cards or pinches Lois in a naughty place, but, in film, the man is still, well, Christ-like. His attraction is that he is "complicated" in that he is a good person who struggles with many of the things we all do (and many that we don't, like complete superiority on a physical and mental level), and not because he is, say, forced by circumstance to become a bookie to support his little daughter after the death of her mother at the hands of mobsters. Apparently, at least with Superman, it is okay for someone to have tremendous power and not abuse it.

Why, then, does Superman remain inviolate in an age in which no one seems to care much about literary desecration? Why does he seem to be safe from the ubiquitously irreverent pens of former English majors who think that the only way a character can be interesting is if he is "damaged"? Could it be that we need him?

Could it be that we need someone to look up to (literally and figuratively) now that we are, as a culture, turning away from religion? -- someone who, fictional or not, we can always trust to take care of us? We, as a culture, might fancy ourselves too hip for church, but our ongoing reverence for our most beloved mythic hero proves one thing to me: We still need to believe. We still want to look to the sky for a savior.

Henry Cavill

I have said this before, but, when I showed my sons the 1978 film, Superman: the Movie, for the first time, I actually had to fight back sobs when Reeve appeared on screen in his Superman outfit. Besides introducing my boys to part of my boyhood, I was happy that I was putting something in front of them that would teach them well; a model of a good man who could (as he does in the film) rescue a little girl's cat and also divert a nuclear weapon when he needs to -- a rocket that he diverts before diverting the one headed for his love Lois Lane. Why? Because he made a promise. If that doesn't choke you up a little...

Stay with us, Superman. We need you now more than ever.

Viral Morality vs. Changing our Children

Everything is external in our current culture. Everyone recognizes that, right?

If we want to combat racism, we set up think-tanks and we draft new policies. We demand investigations. We band together and have riots.

If we want to fight against drug use, we pass laws. We arrest people.

If we want kids to do better in school, we force them to meet homogenized standards on cookie-cutter tests.

Even the ALS challenge, thing...

Let me say this: it is working. People know, now, about the disease who never before did. The money raised has been astronomical, compared to years before. Practically, it is a wonderful thing. (For now; until the novelty dies off.)

It is interesting to me that things like this ice-bucket challenge are labeled "viral" because that is really what has happened. People have caught this "virus" that prompts them to donate -- or, at least, to pour water over their heads.

Faith Helps

I have often said that I don't pretend to understand the God in whom I believe. But I do believe (if not under the all-too-narrow constraints of some of my fellow believers). In my mind, pretending to understand a Force so much superior to myself is actually an insult to that Force.

I think I have seen signs (not images of Jesus on toast, but more profound feelings and conclusions) that God is up there...

Could I be wrong? Sure. I don't think I am, but...I'm not the God I believe in; therefore, I am imperfect.

Some friends of mine, over the years, have believed very deeply in the healing powers of certain stones and crystals. Maybe that is a step more logical than belief in God. I don't know. But I admit, it seems "unscientific" to me. Let's say, I am an agnostic when it comes to that stuff.

But here's the thing: we need faith in something. If a person wears a crystal around his neck and thinks it makes his shoulder pain go away, the result is positive. Maybe the stone did it; maybe belief helped the body. This is nothing new. But it is good for people, right?

Some will say that it is a fostering of ignorance to encourage this sort of thing. Maybe. But maybe ignorance is a lot like innocence and maybe the world needs a little more wide-eyed wonder.

This doesn't mean we stop going to doctors or that we stop applying logic to our quest for understanding, even in matters of spirituality, but that we should open our eyes to the possibility that we might benefit by the touch of the intangible and, yes, even the unprovable.

My faith wavers, as it does with anyone else who has a mind. But I teach my kids a belief in God. It is a good thing for a child to believe he is being watched over; it is a good thing for a child to be able to pray. If I am right, prayer amounts to a helping hand from above; if I am wrong, it is, at the very least, good catharsis over the growing up years. Some day, they can draw their own conclusions as to whether Dad was right or wrong.

Well, I know one thing: when I was doing battle with cancer, I, on one particular day, felt like I was reaching the end of my strength (emotionally). I went upstairs and I lay on the bed and I started just talking to God -- out loud, mind you. After about an hour of this, I got up and went downstairs to the family. My strength was back and, eventually, my body won.

Why? Who cares. Faith helps.

The Bible in the Stampede

I teach and I am the vice principal of academics at a small Catholic high school. I know a lot of people are reacting to Catholicism these days with a great deal of negativity, for every reason from the pedophile scandals to a complete dismissal of the possibility of God or of an afterlife. I understand. (I think dismissal of belief because of unprovability is foolish, but I have said things about that elsewhere.)

Lately, though, a lot of people (including Catholics) have been pointing to Pope Francis and saying, "Finally! -- a pope who is x, y and z." He is tolerant. He is an eschewer of wealth. He even went to far as to say he is not in a position to judge homosexuals who earnestly seek to find God. People see him as a breath of fresh air.

(Most people, anyway. Recently, I saw someone trying to prove he is the Antichrist.)

Funny -- I hear what the pope says and I think...well, yeah. That's the stuff I thought Catholicism, at its core, was about in the first place. Love. Sincerity. Concern for the poor. Et cetera. To me, Pope Francis is just saying all of the things I have understood were represented in the Gospel -- stuff that, perhaps, has gotten lost in bureaucracy and in human weaknesses since the start of things.

The God of Creativity

Alright -- enough of this happy music nonsense. Let's go deep, here.

After having read a cool post about Lundy Island, in which the writer alludes to the Celtic belief that the island was one of the "Isles of the Dead", I journeyed, in my own head, back to the years in which I was fascinated by ancient myth and legend and a familiar question popped up:

How did these people, with no empirical proof, no apologetics, no theological logic -- not even a written account of, say, a god having visited Earth, as in the New Testament -- remain committed to their beliefs? How did they perform rituals and commune with their gods with any degree of certainty? -- not even a gigantic, overarching church telling them that there are deep historical roots, as with, say Catholicism?

I mean, it's cool to say: "The sun sustains us. It gives us light. It seems to affect the growth of wheat. Therefore, it is a god. We will call it Lugh and we will worship it." That, I get.

But, then, one day, a priest of Lugh is out in a coracle and he sees a mysterious little island and says: "Ah, that's where we go when we die!" What makes him think this is true? (The very first guy to think it, I mean -- because, after that, all bets are off. People tend to believe what someone tells them.)

Wrong mythology, but you get the point. 

There are two possibilities: 1) He doesn't think it is true but thinks it would be fun to fool everyone and start his own religion or, 2) he thinks the idea is a divine revelation.

Thank Outer Space for Small (Yet Beneficial) Random Eventualities!

Let me write this out to get it straight. I just want to get it clear in my own head so I don't make an ass of myself...again...

In our enlightened modern era, people think the idea of God and an afterlife is ridiculous. Science is the thing; I've even called it the new religion, somewhere else...

This being what it is, many of these devotees to science, with a complete dismissal of any theological beliefs, follow a Facebook page with the boringly irreverant name of "I F*#@ing Love Science" -- a site that looks, to me, often, like it f*#@ing loves Photoshop. (But that's neither here nor there.) A site that posts its revelations in memes. As if that is not enough, though the devotees to the surface layer of modern science don't believe that we can move, in spirit, to another place after death -- because this is just plain silly -- they are willing to accept the fact that there are parallel universes full of copies of all of us. After all, "IT IS WRITTEN" -- by the scientists... Black holes? Quantum mechanics? As long as the priests wear lab coats instead of collars, members of the Church of Science are cool with believing in things without explanations. Oh, and many are perfectly willing to accept, at the click of a mouse, that a picture of Bill Nye the Science Guy, superimposed with a quotation, is enough proof that he actually said it. Remember what John F. Kennedy said: "Just because you see it on the Internet, it doesn't mean it is true."

(This, of course, despite the facts that actual scientists, like David Eagleman, are far less dismissive.)

The Faith of Our Children

As we get older, we get more sophisticated. We learn things and we unlearn things. We become disenchanted with certain other things. We lay down beliefs of certain kinds and leave them behind, especially the ones we had as children. But I wonder if that means we should take those beliefs away from our kids simply because we have outgrown them.

Clear, unambiguous and un-sarcastic statement: I believe in God.  I’ve said it before. In that respect, I have not changed since childhood. My concept of who God might be has evolved, certainly, into something much more complex than it was for me as a kid, but this is not a theological blog, so I won’t get into it. Let it suffice to say that my views have evolved into something much more logical than they once were.

There are many people, however, who lose their belief in God, even if they are people who once did believe, without questioning. For them, it would be hypocritical – perhaps even disturbing – to teach their children to believe. I get that.

But what about those who were brought up to believe who still kind of believe but…not for sure – the ones who have evolved into questioning things on a deep level – the ones who have come to question the things they were told as kids? What should they do with their kids?

You Must Comply: On Mandatory Birth-Control Funding for Religious Institutions

I'm not a political writer. But, today, I'm going to pretend I am, because I think it is the only way to get my jaw off of the ground.

In case you haven't heard -- and you may not have, because coverage for this seems to be quite limited (I mostly found reference to it on Catholic-associated websites), the United States Department of Health has made a new rule, which did appear in the Courier Post, a New Southern New Jersey paper:

At issue is the Jan. 20 announcement of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the nation’s new health care law requires nearly all employers to provide insurance plans that offer free birth control to women. While the Obama administration had already stated that churches and houses of worship would be exempt from that provision, Sebelius said religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals, colleges and charities must comply.

Are they serious? -- "religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals, colleges and charities must comply"?

A New Kind of Intolerance?

Here's a story that made me sad. If you don't have time to read it, let it suffice to say that a teenaged girl,  Jessica Ahlquist, went to court against her school in order to have a banner removed from the wall -- a prayer that had been written by a former student of the school and that had hung on the wall in the place for forty-nine years -- and she won. Ahlquist is an atheist and she found the prayer offensive.

Some have labeled this girl as "evil" and others have lauded her as a champion of the ideal of "separation of church and state" that is contained in the first amendment of the United States Constitution.

I have always been mystified by people's interpretation of this short passage:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof [my italics]; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In Defense of "Happy Holidays"

As a "word guy" I am annoyed by a lot of things people say and I have referenced a few of them on H&R. And, like a lot of you, I'm turned off by "doublespeak" and jargon and I am suspicious of anything that is considered "politically correct," not only because being politically correct seems cowardly (even though it is often kind, though more often beneficial to the speaker), but because I have learned that whatever politically correct word or phrase one picks, someone is bound to figure out a way to be offended by it; and, even if a politically correct statement is okay today, it might not be okay tomorrow.

(Think of the progress from that most atrocious of n-words (from the corrupted word "negro") to the gentler "colored" to the proudly proclaimed "black" and, eventually, to the "politicaly correct" "African American" -- a phrase, by the way, that a black college student of mine one voiced violent objection to: "If I hear one more person in this room refer to black people as African Americans, I'm going to flip." His objection was that he was black, but of West-Indian descent and that calling him African American was simply incorrect and that is was also a default disregarding of his culture. He saw, he said, no more problem being referred to as "the black guy" than he would imagine a ginger person should have with being called "the red-haired guy.")

The Science of God

"Under Pier": Karen Matarazzo

I mentioned, a little while ago, that I have been reading C.S Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia to my youger son. As usual, Lewis's work has gotten me thinking about faith (as he meant it to).

I'm a firm believer that those who will, ultimately, find faith in a higher power do so by their own map -- not by getting force-fed someone else's beliefs. So fear not: I'm not going to try to get you to believe what I believe; but, as always, I am going to try to get you thinking so that you will draw (or continue drawing) your own map. Whether that map ultimately leads you to faith or the lack thereof is up to you.

In the interest of disclosure, I do believe in God. This belief is quite unfashionable in intellectual circles, nowadays, so I have taken my share of flack about it from grad school, on. Most intellectuals think it is illogical to believe in God. (Some readers might have just dismissed my credibility as a thinker, based on the statement above. Consider that reaction as you read on.) I have written before about the common smugness of both the non-believers and people of faith. But to dismiss the belief in God -- or anything else that defies the things we "know" to be "real" -- as illogical is, in itself, a foolish and short-sighted stance to take.

Four Kinds of Faith

The first kind: I believe in Santa because my parents do (or did). I hang the stockings, dutifully.

The second kind: I do not believe in Santa, but I really want presents, so I will pretend, in hopes that I will believe again, some day. I push away doubt, because doubt is the enemy of faith.

The third kind: If there is no Santa, then how come there are presents? Of course there is a Santa. I know it for sure every time I see a Christmas tree.

The fourth kind: I have heard the distant sleigh bells; I have felt the warm joy; I have seen the shadow of the sleigh on the snow on a moon-brightened night; I've heard his laughter in the winter wind. He's up there. He's got to be.

Resisting the Twisters of God

Some years ago, I bought Sting's album The Soul Cages. Lyrically, I think it is his best work -- in fact, I would group the lyrics on that album in with some of the finest works of English literature. No I'm not kidding. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Be that as it may, on one song, "All This Time," Sting utters the line:

"Men go crazy in congregations; they only get better one by one."

This, I worked out years later, is derived from Charles Mackay's statement:

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Sting is putting a slant on it, of course, at the expense of organized religion, but the principle is the same: We need to work things out for ourselves, in the end. But how many of us do?

Steve and Walt (A Dialogue)

Two worker ants, Steve and Walt, sit, resting, after a long day's work.

Steve: Tough day on the hill, eh, Walt?

Walt: You said it, Steve-o. I must have carried about ten times my body weight a few hundred times.

Steve: What's that work out to?

Walt: No idea. That's math I can't handle.

Steve: True that.

Jerusalem Cruisers: Delivering Jesus

Three ominous men stepped out of a black car -- suit-clad; dead-serious -- and onto our neighborhood street at eleven a.m.on Sunday. One of them -- the mastermind, no doubt -- had donned a charcoal cheese-cutter cap to ward off the soft sunlight. (Evil, I thought. Only evil people wear that sort of a cap on this kind of a soft day.) They carried books under their arms. But the red, ribbon bookmarks belied their content: Lo! Bibles. Could they still be evil?

My wife and I, sitting by the window and having our morning coffee/tea, let out a mutual groan. These people. Not evil -- just pushy.

The conversation diced itself from a joyous repartee into stilted monosyllables as we continued to glance outside in order to ascertain how close they were coming to our door. There we were: two fat chickens awaiting the farmer's ax. Only this farmer wielded a Bible as the ax and he intended to send a metallic chill through our cozy Sunday morning with one fell swing.

Engineering Doom

The Dark One sat in his element, face hidden in the infinite shadow of a hood. The other sat across from him, nose sharp, eyes blinking the cold twinkle of a knife in a candle's flicker.

Their fingertips traced the rims of guilded cups. Beyond the chamber door raged the tortured sounds of an innumerable human throng.

"And how shall we bring them to this doom, Master?"

"Slowly," the Dark One said. "Slowly. They shall erect their own cage. We'll need to do little.

The Audience (A Fable?)

The world is music -- the greatest composition, ever, penned by the Unseen Composer. The Composer has crafted the world out of four elements: rhythm, melody, timbre, and harmony. And when he raises His baton, the world shifts and changes around us, like sound waves washing over a concert audience. We watch; we listen.

But we hear things differently.

Some follow only the rhythm, because that can be done with no thought and with no work. A rhythm drives everyone's body. Rhythm, is easy. Rhythm, is powerful. Rhythm lives inside our chests and rings within our ears in deepest silence. Rhythm, is easy. Rhythm is powerful.

Survival of the Smuggest

Click pic for source

There's a lot of chatter going on right now about Truth, especially where Christmas and God are concerned.

As you no doubt have heard, there is this atheistic campaign going on. A billboard was posted near the Lincoln Tunnel in New York that read: "You know it's a myth. This season, celebrate reason." In close proximity, Catholics have countered with: "You know it's real. This season, celebrate Jesus."

Power-Washing the Lord

Click pic for source

One morning, I drove my usual route down an ugly business-lined road, dodging fools like I was in a video game -- fools popping out of driveways. Fools cutting across lanes. Fools standing on the double-line in the middle of a fifty mile-per-hour road. Then, as always, I made a slight right onto a rural road and slowed down to take in the rising morning sun over the trees and fields on both sides of the car.

On my way in to town, I passed a church. A sparkling cloud hung there as if someone inside a glycerine-water-filled snow globe had hit a drum covered with gold dust. I slowed down, watching, expecting the cloud to fall, but it remained, changing shape and drifting into nothing at the edges, rolling like cream does when it is poured into coffee.

Then, I saw the source of the golden, miraculous cloud.