Colorado City
On the bright side: I do my first weekend of sailing classes this weekend in Santa Cruz and I'm very excited; S is out of town and it seems like a good way to spend my time.
On the dark side, I'm sitting here with Dr. Phil on, S asleep on the couch getting over a cold. His show is about a place called Colorado City, a town completely run by polygamists, 'fundamentalist' mormons, long disowned by the mainstream LDS. I read Under the Banner of Heaven a couple years ago, and I've heard these stories before. A reality quite apart from The Scarlet Tent.
And I can't help but think of Jesus' comment in Mark (and also in Matthew and Luke):
"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.
Does this fit Colorado City? A town where 15 year old girls are forced to marry fifty year old men and share them with other wives, in the name of religion, of my religion? I'm not a Mormon, but I am a Christian, and surely these people consider themselves Christians.
The contemporary skeptical movement, currently starring Michael Shermer, is one rational way to approach what we think we know about the universe. I don't have time to enter into discussion with this here (certainly I struggle with/engage their ideas in my own head often) but one reasonI know Shermer calls himself (if I recall correctly) an 'agnostic non-theist' is that no God would allow such random human suffering, even random animal suffering. Bad things happen to innocent people every day; those who have committed great harm often live well. It's an old philosophical problem; perhaps the oldest besides the origin of existence.
One solution is karma, karmic winds or the karmic imprint: one will pay in the next life. And in this system, the girls being married/raped in the name of God in Colorado City may well have committed some similar act in a prior life and their suffering is payment (though how reincarnatonists, who of course might be correct, find justice in suffering apart from any awareness of prior life crimes is a question for me; I am also suspicious of social castes, or varna). A little girl born with cancer? Same thing. According to karma, she is atoning for prior life sin. In the body and mind of a child.
Christianity is not much more satisfactory for me when it comes to the doctrine of original sin (Adam's transgression damns a race?) or election. And frankly, I don't think any human can understand God's perspective on either of these things; this is not impressive argument on my part I know. However, I admit just because I don't like something does not mean it's false. If God exists, his attributes, his laws, are his own.
But one place I do find Christianity satisfactory is that Jesus claimed to be the future judge of the world. A personal judge who will know every thought and action. A judge who while on earth showed a heart for children and the innocent, the oppressed and the outcast. With the exception of his hard words to the Caananite woman in Matthew 15:26 (though her faith is immediately rewarded) I can't think of a time when Jesus was angry at anyone save religious hypocrites (the withered fig tree doesn't count for me; I can't believe some skeptics use this to undermine Christianity...anyone who could wither a plant through speech would certainly hold my theological attention).
Many were excluded from the Temple because they were 'unclean' by those who lived by the letter of Moses and not the Spirit of God. Jesus argued (in defiance of Levitical religion it seems) that it's what comes out of the man, not lack of ritual washing, that defiles. I also have to note that the parables in Luke...the lost coin, the lost sheep...show a God actively seeking the salvation of the most lost of the lost. In general, Luke and John both present a Jesus who claims that salvation is open to all who seek it, who seek him, more precisely. Finally, in Matthew is the stunning moral philosophy of the Matthean beatitudes, where the only requirement for divine comfort seems to be need.
Yes, Christianity does present many questions: what about children, those who abuse because they are abused (legion), chemical imbalances, the mentally incompetent, those brain damaged, infants and the fetus, the zygote? But not more serious problems than a world full of accidental suffering and no final justice, an ateological universe, belief in consciousness through accident and without the transcendent. Yes innocents suffer on earth; the world does seem to operate without any final accountability. But no scholar so far has been able to convince me that the 'historical' Jesus didn't claim to be the future judge of the world. And if he was right, then I have to believe he will judge fairly.
I certainly hope so, because then the abusers in Colorado City will be held accountable, finally accountable, for using Jesus' name to justify their lust and need for sexual and gender power. And the girls, at least some, will be comforted, fully. They will find that the nightmare they believe is God is not God at all but a lie. It must also be said that the abusers who seek God will be so changed that their disease is washed away, made 'white as snow.'
But I'm getting over my head. As usual. What is 'fair' in God's eyes? What is justice? And S wants to go the grocery store now that she's awake, and we're out of everything. I'm off.
***
It is a wonderful gift to have this blog. When I write, I think of each of those I know who read (when they can): Scott, Funkiller, Romy, KMJ, Mrs. Fish, Artist as a Young Mom, Twyla....I hear the voices and see the faces when I know them. Or I remember the kind comments when I don't. Thank you all.
t
On the dark side, I'm sitting here with Dr. Phil on, S asleep on the couch getting over a cold. His show is about a place called Colorado City, a town completely run by polygamists, 'fundamentalist' mormons, long disowned by the mainstream LDS. I read Under the Banner of Heaven a couple years ago, and I've heard these stories before. A reality quite apart from The Scarlet Tent.
And I can't help but think of Jesus' comment in Mark (and also in Matthew and Luke):
"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.
Does this fit Colorado City? A town where 15 year old girls are forced to marry fifty year old men and share them with other wives, in the name of religion, of my religion? I'm not a Mormon, but I am a Christian, and surely these people consider themselves Christians.
The contemporary skeptical movement, currently starring Michael Shermer, is one rational way to approach what we think we know about the universe. I don't have time to enter into discussion with this here (certainly I struggle with/engage their ideas in my own head often) but one reasonI know Shermer calls himself (if I recall correctly) an 'agnostic non-theist' is that no God would allow such random human suffering, even random animal suffering. Bad things happen to innocent people every day; those who have committed great harm often live well. It's an old philosophical problem; perhaps the oldest besides the origin of existence.
One solution is karma, karmic winds or the karmic imprint: one will pay in the next life. And in this system, the girls being married/raped in the name of God in Colorado City may well have committed some similar act in a prior life and their suffering is payment (though how reincarnatonists, who of course might be correct, find justice in suffering apart from any awareness of prior life crimes is a question for me; I am also suspicious of social castes, or varna). A little girl born with cancer? Same thing. According to karma, she is atoning for prior life sin. In the body and mind of a child.
Christianity is not much more satisfactory for me when it comes to the doctrine of original sin (Adam's transgression damns a race?) or election. And frankly, I don't think any human can understand God's perspective on either of these things; this is not impressive argument on my part I know. However, I admit just because I don't like something does not mean it's false. If God exists, his attributes, his laws, are his own.
But one place I do find Christianity satisfactory is that Jesus claimed to be the future judge of the world. A personal judge who will know every thought and action. A judge who while on earth showed a heart for children and the innocent, the oppressed and the outcast. With the exception of his hard words to the Caananite woman in Matthew 15:26 (though her faith is immediately rewarded) I can't think of a time when Jesus was angry at anyone save religious hypocrites (the withered fig tree doesn't count for me; I can't believe some skeptics use this to undermine Christianity...anyone who could wither a plant through speech would certainly hold my theological attention).
Many were excluded from the Temple because they were 'unclean' by those who lived by the letter of Moses and not the Spirit of God. Jesus argued (in defiance of Levitical religion it seems) that it's what comes out of the man, not lack of ritual washing, that defiles. I also have to note that the parables in Luke...the lost coin, the lost sheep...show a God actively seeking the salvation of the most lost of the lost. In general, Luke and John both present a Jesus who claims that salvation is open to all who seek it, who seek him, more precisely. Finally, in Matthew is the stunning moral philosophy of the Matthean beatitudes, where the only requirement for divine comfort seems to be need.
Yes, Christianity does present many questions: what about children, those who abuse because they are abused (legion), chemical imbalances, the mentally incompetent, those brain damaged, infants and the fetus, the zygote? But not more serious problems than a world full of accidental suffering and no final justice, an ateological universe, belief in consciousness through accident and without the transcendent. Yes innocents suffer on earth; the world does seem to operate without any final accountability. But no scholar so far has been able to convince me that the 'historical' Jesus didn't claim to be the future judge of the world. And if he was right, then I have to believe he will judge fairly.
I certainly hope so, because then the abusers in Colorado City will be held accountable, finally accountable, for using Jesus' name to justify their lust and need for sexual and gender power. And the girls, at least some, will be comforted, fully. They will find that the nightmare they believe is God is not God at all but a lie. It must also be said that the abusers who seek God will be so changed that their disease is washed away, made 'white as snow.'
But I'm getting over my head. As usual. What is 'fair' in God's eyes? What is justice? And S wants to go the grocery store now that she's awake, and we're out of everything. I'm off.
***
It is a wonderful gift to have this blog. When I write, I think of each of those I know who read (when they can): Scott, Funkiller, Romy, KMJ, Mrs. Fish, Artist as a Young Mom, Twyla....I hear the voices and see the faces when I know them. Or I remember the kind comments when I don't. Thank you all.
t
Comments
I have few answers for myself on these issues, but I'm with you, historians cannot refute Jesus' claim to be judge of the world. I agree, if he is to judge, he will judge fairly. Those folks in Colorado City should be very afraid.
Peace, brother.