I like Halloween

One of the things I like about Halloween is that it is overtly pagan. It has not been retrofitted or appropriated by Christianity. That isn’t to say I’m a pagan. I don’t see anything particularly wrong with being pagan. It’s just not my identity. But I know that my ancestors were, and although we might not know in great detail what they believed, we know that they did have their own ideas and beliefs before Christianity showed up. Those beliefs meant something to them. It helped them cope with life. I like acknowledging that, and I like how not every aspect of their pre-Christian existence has been erased.

I like that Halloween is kind of dark and creepy. I spent most of my life in West Virginia, and that state has four distinct seasons. I live in the Central Valley of California now, and yesterday, I went to the store wearing shorts and a t-shirt even though it’s almost November. But in West Virginia, it’s starting to get cold and you know it’s only going to get colder. The vegetable gardens are gone, the apples have been picked, and you know the earth isn’t going to give you much until spring. That had to be a scary time for our ancestors. No wonder they would focus on death and their fear of being haunted this time of year. They were living close to the edge, and they must have wondered if they would make it until spring.

I have never liked winter, but the weather this time of year in West Virginia is rather pleasant. It’s not very cold yet, and the heat and humidity of summer are gone. The memory of summer still lingers, so it’s nice to be able to go outside wearing a light jacket or sweater and to be comfortable for hours, so long as it isn’t raining. And the colors… Oh, my God, the colors. It’s a special time of year in West Virginia.

Many people think the holiday season begins with Thanksgiving, but in my mind, I’ve always pushed that back to Halloween. Once you get to Halloween, it’s only a few weeks to Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is another holiday that I associate with fall colors, cool but pleasant weather and ancestors. Maybe more recent ancestors as opposed to ancient and pagan ones, but still I think of those who came before me, those whose existence gave rise to my existence.

Halloween might have started as a way to acknowledge your fears, but here in the U.S., it has taken on some aspects of Pride. On Halloween, you can shed expectations, including gender expectations, and express some part of yourself that you usually keep hidden in a way that’s playful and funny. I like that. I like Halloween.

Paradise on a Bus

After my father had died in May 2007, I lived in our house in Fayetteville by myself for three months. I don’t drive, so I started using a county bus to get back and forth to the Super Wal-Mart on the highway. Not many used this bus. I’m not sure how many were even aware that Fayette County had such a bus. Those who did use it tended to be older.

One day in August, I took the bus back to Fayetteville after grocery shopping at the nearby Wal-Mart. There were only two other passengers on board, a man and a woman. They were both in their mid to late 70s. They sat on opposite sides of the bus, so they clearly were not together. They didn’t seem to know each other, and I didn’t know them.
 

For a couple of minutes, we drove along in silence. Then the man and woman began talking about religion. I could tell almost immediately that they were not of the same opinion, and I hoped they would just drop it so we could all go home in peace. But they didn’t drop it. They both pressed the issue. The man was sure that the righteous would be rewarded by being sent to heaven. The woman was convinced that the righteous would be resurrected so they may enjoy a paradise on earth.

Both stated their beliefs as if they were absolute and undisputed facts, and they were clearly annoying the hell out of each other. They began spewing Bible quotes at one another like poison darts. Each quote was delivered as if it were the final word and their opponent’s argument had surely been utterly and completely refuted. It went back and forth like this, and their voices became louder and more heated. Eventually, they became overtly abusive. They called one another names like “fool” and “idiot.”

I began to fear they might actually get into a fight. The bus driver was a soft spoken, mild mannered man, and when I looked at him, I noticed that he, too, seemed worried that the situation was getting out of control.

When the bus came to a stop across from the Court House, the elderly man stood to get off. He and the gray-haired lady exchanged insults one last time for good measure, and the man was suddenly gone.

The Lost Story

When I was a small boy, a relative died, and we came into possession of her books. I couldn’t read yet, but I loved stories, so I was fascinated by the books. One in particular caught my eye. On the cover was a picture of a gaunt older woman with bristly, shoulder-length grey hair. She stood rigid in her simple but elegant clothes and looked out at us with a determined expression. She appeared weathered and tired but not quite ready to give up. Beside her was a cottage made of large, square stones. The wooden door was heavy and rustic. I needed to know who that woman was and why she looked the way she did.

I begged my mother to read me the story, but she said it wasn’t for children. I didn’t care. I wanted to hear the story anyway. She said I wouldn’t be interested, but I thought I should be the judge of that, so I kept begging. One day, my mother gave in. She sat down, opened the book and began reading. But after a few sentences, she closed the book and said that I was too young for the story. I was hugely disappointed, but I stopped asking her to read it to me.

I don’t know what happened to that book. It was gone by the time I was old enough to read it for myself. I don’t know the title or the author. I wonder why my mother was so determined not to read it to me. Maybe I would have become bored with it after a couple of pages. She gave the impression that it was something forbidden, and that only piqued my curiosity. My mother regularly read me stories about parents who deliberately abandoned their children in the woods and old ladies who liked to eat children for dinner. What could be so horrible compared to that? Maybe I was drawn to the adult novel because the woman on the cover reminded me of an ominous character from a fairytale. To this day, I wonder what was in that book. I guess I’ll never know, and I feel cheated.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a collection of essays by David Sedaris...

...and, as he usually does, Sedaris entertains his readers with seemingly light and humorous stories about his life, especially his youth. They become more poignant and bitter-sweet when they sink in.

David tells us about the time he was, more or less, forced to go to a neighborhood slumber party where the guys ended up playing strip poker. Pubescent David felt out of place. He didn’t fit in with these boys. He was nervous around them. And he was terrified that he’d get an erection when he took off his clothes in their presence. It seems he had assumed he would lose because he couldn’t imagine beating these straight boys, but it turns out he was pretty good at playing cards and only lost his shoes. When a couple of the boys were nude, David suggested they pay for their losing hands by sitting on his lap for a few minutes. He loved holding these naked boys, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew they had gone along with his suggestion because they felt they had to, and David knew that later, when the guys had a chance to think about what happened, he would get a certain reputation and possibly become more of an outcast than he already was.

As a young adult, David lived in an apartment in a slummy part of town. His neighbor was a stripper, and she had a little girl. The girl was neglected and spent much of the late afternoon and evening alone. She sought David’s company. David is socially awkward, so he was reluctant to befriend this nine-year-old girl, but he felt sorry for her. Soon, he imagined he could help the little girl by playing a combination of Professor Higgins and Auntie Mame for her. His mother informed him that it wasn’t that easy and warned him to keep his distance. When the girl began stealing from him, the relationship cooled. More trouble followed, and he confronted the negligent mother. The mother felt she had enough to deal with without having the “faggot” next door complaining about her daughter. The little girl quickly figured out that David was not the kind of adult she had to be afraid of or respect, so she started taunting him. She began standing outside his door and calling him a faggot, chanting it in a low whisper. When David informed his mother, she insisted that he move out immediately before the stripper and her daughter accused him of being a child molester.

When David was finished with college, he drifted across the country and began abusing drugs. After a couple of years, he moved back in with his parents. David stayed up all night, slept all day and wasn’t particularly eager to find a job. A couple of months went by, and his father called him into his den. He told David that he had to leave. David assumed that it was because he had become a drug using layabout, so even though he was hurt, he didn’t really hold it against his father. It was a wake-up call, and David was determined to get his act together. David’s sister offered to let him stay at her house for a while, and his mother drove him. His mother cried and was unusually apologetic. David didn’t understand why she was so upset because he wasn’t all that upset. Years later, he learned his mother was mortified by his father’s actions because the real reason he wanted David out of the house was because he is gay. This was one of the shortest chapters in the book, and it lacked his characteristic self-deprecating humor and wry observations.

A few thoughts about early Christianity.

I’m not a biblical scholar, and I don’t claim to be, but here are a few bits of information that I have pieced together that I find interesting. You can believe me or not believe me. I don’t care. If you’re interested, I encourage you to do your own digging. Scholars I would recommend are Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagles, John Dominic Crossan and Luke Timothy Johnson. Ehrman is an agnostic. Pagles and Crossan are Christians…though not in the conventional sense and certainly not fundamentalist. Johnson is a former RC priest.

Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria is the first person we know of who identified as authoritative the 27 books of the New Testament that we have today and only those 27 books. He listed the books in his Easter letter of 367 AD. That’s over three centuries after the death of Jesus.

None of these books were written by Jesus, and none were written while he was alive. Many think that the four gospels in the New Testament were written by Jesus’ apostles or their associates, but in fact, all four were written anonymously. They were ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John at a later date.

Most biblical scholars believe that most of the letters of Paul were in fact written by Paul, but not all of them. However, Paul never claimed to have met the living Jesus, and Paul says very little about Jesus’ life or his teachings. Paul claimed to have had a vision of the resurrected Jesus, and Paul was more concerned with his death and resurrection.

Most biblical scholars believe that the gospels were written after Paul wrote his letters. Mark is first (about 70 AD), followed by Matthew and Luke (about 85 AD) and then John (about 90 AD). They were written in Greek. And they are four different stories which many Christians tend to conflate. Jesus’ apostles almost assuredly had nothing to do with the writing of these gospels. They were lower class peasants who spoke Aramaic, and more than likely, they were illiterate. They could have been dead by the time they were written, too. (What happened to the apostles is mysterious. There are a few accounts, but they were mostly written in the 2^nd century, and many of the claims are rather fantastic.)

We have none of the original manuscripts. We have none that are believed to date from the 1^st century. We only have a few from the 2^nd century. Many of those are in fragments. The earliest is no bigger than a credit card. There are more copies that were written later on. These were all copied by hand. …copies of copies of copies. Later in the Middle Ages, there were trained scribes (RC monks working in monasteries) who were more careful about the process, but the earlier copies were slapdash. There are about 5,500 hand written Greek copies of the books of the New Testament. There are so many discrepancies in these copies that scholars can’t count them all. It is estimated that there are between 100,000 and 400,000 discrepancies. Most seem to be simple mistakes, dropped letters or missing pages, but some are suspicious, suggesting that the discrepancies were deliberate.

The earliest anthology that comes close to the New Testament that we have today is the Codex Sinaiticus. (The word “codex” simply means that it’s form is more like a modern book than a scroll.) It dates from the middle of the 4^th century, about the same time that Athanasius wrote his Easter letter in which he listed the 27 books, but the Codex Sinaiticus doesn’t conform exactly to Athanasius’ canon. An anthology written in the 5^th century called the Codex Alexandrinus still doesn’t conform with the canon we have today.

The canon that we have was formed over a number of centuries, and it contains the books that were generally agreed upon as authoritative by the self-described Orthodox Christians. But there were many other books written by early Christians that the Orthodox group rejected.

The German scholar Walter Bauer came to the conclusion that “Orthodox” Christianity is the version that developed in the early Roman Christian church and that they used their wealth and political influence to demonize and ultimately silence other “schools” of thought.

By all accounts, Christianity remained a tiny religion until the 4^th century. And one could claim that Christianity was hardly a single religion because the different expressions were quite distinct from one another. The Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4^th century. He, of course, was most familiar with the Roman “Orthodox” version, and he is the one who convened the first Ecumenical Council, the First Council of Nicaea. This is the council that gave us the Nicene Creed (later revised) which spelled out the most peculiar doctrine of the trinity. The reason for this was to declare the doctrine the correct, “orthodox” creed and to demand that all others be viewed as heretical. Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire by Theodosius I toward the end of the 4^th century. It’s spread increased rapidly in the 4^th century. By then, the apocalyptic movement started by an early 1^st century Jewish man had become predominately Gentile and, sadly, often anti-Jewish, going so far as to claim Jewish scripture as their own and characterizing Jewish people as “Christ killers.” It’s ironic that it was the Romans who actually killed Jesus, and it was the Romans who played a significant role in spreading Christianity.

It’s also interesting that Jewish apocalypticism, which was a later development and does not date back to the time before Babylonian captivity, was probably a reaction to oppression from more powerful neighbors. Of course, the powerful neighbor oppressing the Jewish people in Jesus’ time were the Romans. So this is a religion that arouse in response to the treachery of the occupying Roman Empire, the Romans killed the founder, and later the Romans adopted it and facilitated the spread of the religion. It's almost like a historical practical joke.

Homo Hermit

I figured out I was gay when I was 11. I was gay before then, of course, but that’s when things fell into place, and I knew what I was, and I had a name for it. I can remember sitting on our back porch by myself and reasoning it out. I liked boys. I didn’t like girls. Boys who like boys are gay. I’m gay.

From that moment on, I was sure I was gay. It was exhilarating. I began having graphic sexual fantasies about boys, and I had crushes on them. I didn’t try to rationalize what I was experiencing or explain it away. I was gay, and I knew it. I was a boy, and I wanted to do things with certain boys. I dreamed of everything from being close to them, to kissing them, holding their hands to putting their private parts in my mouth. I had those feelings. I accepted those feelings, and I enjoyed those feelings. I began to have crushes on movie and TV stars like Shaun Cassidy from the Hardy Boys, one of my favorite TV shows. I can remember getting a magazine when I was in the sixth grade through the Weekly Reader. It was given to me in home room at the start of the day, and it had a picture of Shaun and Parker Stevenson on the cover. Shaun was standing up, and he was wearing tight jeans. A lump in his crotch was clearly visible, and I can recall sitting there and staring at that lump. I imagined what Shaun’s penis looked like. I wanted to see it, and I wanted to suck him. I wanted that more than anything.

But I knew I couldn’t tell a living soul, so I kept it a secret. I enjoyed my feelings, but I never dared tell anyone what I was experiencing. I lived in fear that I would let it slip out by accident. I even began to fear taking naps on the sofa in the living room because I was afraid I’d say something about boys in my sleep. I was afraid of falling ill and becoming delirious because I thought I might say something about boys and someone would hear me and know. That seemed far worse than being deathly ill.

I was always a shy kid, but I became increasingly nervous around people. I feared giving myself away, and it wasn’t that I was merely afraid of saying something. I feared someone would come to the conclusion that I didn’t talk or walk or move or act like other boys. Those gender expectations were strongly enforced, and if you stuck your toe out of your assigned gender box, someone was always ready to pounce. So I lived in terror. I was always on guard. And I kept my distance from others at a time when I should have been learning social skills.

I kept my secret until I went away to college seven years later. Seven years to a young person is like an eternity. When you’re 18 and look back to when you were 11, that seems like ancient history, and I had spent all that time hiding from everybody every minute of the day.

Of course, I had a lot of expectations and hopes about finding a community, and of course life wasn’t suddenly heaven on earth when I found others like me. But something else happened, too. I had been in survival mode for years. All of my emotional energy had been spent simply surviving, and suddenly I was given a certain amount of space. I had some amount of breathing room where I could finally let my guard down a little. And what happened then? All of the anger, rage and sadness I couldn’t deal with when I had to get through the day without acting too queer came flooding into my consciousness. It was overwhelming, and it nearly killed me.

The feelings of uncertainty and insecurity were deeply ingrained, and the feeling that being too open and unguarded around others was dangerous, that became like second nature. And my emotions were always erratic, and they could quickly become extreme. I tried to get over it. I tried so hard. I went to doctor after doctor. I took drug after drug. I even tried electroshock. In the end, I had to accept that too much exposure to other people was dangerous for me. I had to accept that I wasn’t going to lead a “normal” life. I needed to be by myself most of the time.

Why not blame Italians?

Jewish historian Josephus wrote of a mid 1st century riot in Jerusalem during the Passover celebration. He estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed. This was not the first or last Passover riot.

The Roman governor and Roman troops were usually in Jerusalem during Passover because there was a history of violence in the city during this time.
  
Ancient Jews traveled to the city so their Passover lamb could be sacrificed in the Temple by a priest. There were many out-of-towners in the city during this time. Those who traveled far probably didn’t bring a lamb but bought one in the city. Maybe they wanted to change their Roman money for local currency because they didn’t want to buy their Passover lamb using coins with a Roman emperor on them. The Roman emperor was considered a god.

Jesus came to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. According to New Testament accounts, Jesus created a disturbance in the Temple and drew crowds with his teachings. Jewish authorities handed him over to the Romans, and Pontius Pilate had Jesus executed for calling himself the “King of the Jews.” Maybe that was a trumped up charge, or maybe Pontius Pilate didn’t understand what Jesus meant. He probably didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.
 
Many Christians have been calling Jews Christ killers ever since. But most Jews at the time probably had no idea who Jesus was, and it’s not like they all collectively handed Jesus over to Pontius Pilate. The few who did probably had good reason to be concerned about him. If you’re going to blame all Jews throughout history for what happened, why not blame all Italians, too? Pontius Pilate was Roman, and he’s the one who gave the order to have Jesus executed.

Used

When it comes to respecting the opinions of others, I expect many American evangelicals are going to be pains in the backside for a long time to come. Most were born into it, but I think many stay, at least in part, because going through life believing you’re among the “saved” and that you’re among the “brothers and sisters in Christ” is an ego booster. A lot probably don’t have much going for them otherwise. Being an evangelical allows them to think that they’re just a little bit better and more important.

They’re also taught that there’s little room for doubt in their faith. American evangelicals and fundamentalists have a long list of speculative, unprovable beliefs that they speak of as if they’re absolute and irrefutable facts.

They’re taught that there is a cosmic war going on between the armies of God and the armies of darkness, and they’re taught that those who oppose them are under the influence of the forces of darkness. They define themselves as the pure and Godly ones, so in their minds, if you disagree with them, then there must be something wrong with you.

They’re also taught that the apocalypse is coming soon and that the rapture could take place at any moment. They have a mission to save as many souls as they can before the clock runs out. It’s almost as if they imagine a brownie point system is in play and those who talk enough “sinners” into joining God’s army will get an extra reward in heaven.

I don’t think respecting the opinions of others is very high on their list of priorities.

I might be stating the case in stark terms. I know that not all evangelicals are quite that overbearing. But enough are, and that is the culture. I’ve been on the receiving end of their proselytizing more times than I can count, and almost always, it made me feel violated. It was as if I had just been objectified and used without my consent. I felt like I had been elected to serve as a prop in a play that was going on inside their heads, and it didn’t matter if I wanted to be in that play or not. They could walk away from the incident and say to themselves, “I tried to save poor Gary’s soul today, but he’s still resisting God. I hope someone talks some sense into him before it’s too late.”

I have PTSD and extreme social phobia, so even ordinary conversations can be an ordeal. But those who came at me with their Jesus always made it absolutely clear that they didn’t give one flying fuck in hell what I felt or thought about anything. They wanted to sell me something because they were after the commission. I was just the mark or the sucker.

The cosmic war has been delayed due to inclement weather.

The author of the Old Testament’s Book of Daniel claims to be writing in exile in Babylon in the 6^th century B.C.E., but most biblical scholars believe the book was actually written in the 2^nd century B.C.E., four hundred years later. The book is apocalyptic. It speaks of a cosmic war between God and the armies of darkness. The world at present is controlled by the forces of darkness, but a mighty clash is coming soon. God will destroy his enemies, and the world to come will be just and righteous. The dead will be resurrected and judged. Those who remained righteous in a world controlled by dark forces will be rewarded.

It is easy for Christians who read the Old Testament as a single piece to come away with the impression that this apocalyptic world view was there from the start, but it wasn’t. It’s a later development. Earlier writings indicate the ancient Jews were not much concerned with an afterlife or a resurrection of the dead or a cosmic war. The rise of apocalypticism could be viewed as a reaction to the little nation of Judea getting kicked around by larger and more powerful neighbors…Assyria, Babylon, Rome. The Jews were supposed to be God’s chosen people living in the promised land. So why are they being threatened so often? Have they displeased God? That would be the old answer. But apocalypticism had another answer. The world is at present is a messed up place because it is under the influence of dark forces. Many righteous people have suffered as a result, but a new world is coming. Everything will be put right. The dead will be resurrected. The righteous will be rewarded. (It just so happens that a nearby religious belief system, Zoroastrianism, has a similar world view.) Judging from New Testament accounts, Jesus was a proponent of apocalypticism. So was Paul.

Apocalypticism gave hope to those who felt oppressed. It explained why good people were often harmed in this life while bad people were often rewarded. It encouraged people to stick to their principles, and it promised they would eventually be rewarded. And the reward was supposed to come soon.

The trouble is, apocalypticism didn’t deliver. All of these centuries later, life can still be remarkably cruel, unfair, painful and short. It also encourages believers to define themselves as being one of the good guys. A self-identified “good guy” might not be self-critical. A “good guy” might not be willing to see a problem as complex. “Good guys” tend to define all those who appose them as “bad guys.” How can you bend or compromise when you’re fighting against the armies of darkness? Why should you try to see things from the other person’s point of view when that person is evil?

Two Birth Narratives

There are only two accounts of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem in the New Testament. One is in Matthew and the other is in Luke. Many Christians conflate the two narratives. In the Christmas plays, Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem because of a census. Then you have the three wise men showing up, and there’s mention of the threat from Herod. But these are actually two different stories, and the details don’t really fit together so nicely.

In Matthew, it seems that Mary and Joseph didn’t travel to Bethlehem because that’s where they lived, and they fled to Egypt to protect their son from Herod. When they returned, they settled in Nazareth. The Magi and the star are from Matthew’s account. And Matthew tells us Joseph had a dream that convinced him Mary had not been unfaithful to him even though she was pregnant.

In Luke’s account, Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth. An angel informed Mary she was to give birth, and she and Joseph headed to Bethlehem for the census. There wasn’t a room at the inn, so the couple had to seek alternative shelter. When Mary gave birth, shepherds came to admire the baby. After a trip to the Temple in Jerusalem, the couple headed home to Nazareth with their newborn.

There’s no historical records that corroborate the accounts of Herod’s massacre or the Roman census. And what a strange census it would be that required people to return to the home of their ancestors. Joseph supposedly had to go to Bethlehem because he’s a descendant of David. David lived 1,000 years before. Imagine if the U.S. Census Bureau demanded that you return to the home of your ancestors from a 1,000 years ago. How many of us would even know where to go to fulfill such an obligation?

Maybe the authors of Matthew and Luke were not even trying to give us a strict historically accurate account of the birth of Jesus. Maybe they never imagined anyone would take them literally.

"Right" Belief

C.S. Lewis said that he felt a need to pray and that his prayers changed him, not God. As I understand it, the 12^th century Jewish philosopher Maimonides believed that God did not actually need animal sacrifices. He believed that early Jews had gotten the idea from the Egyptians. They didn’t know any better, so they thought this was the way to show respect to a god, and God being the gentleman that he is graciously accepted the gesture…but it was unnecessary. Maimonides was influenced by Aristotle. Animal sacrifice was common in ancient Greece, too, and as I understand it, Aristotle believed that no god required sacrifices. It was just some weirdness human beings felt the need to engage in.

What if all religions, beliefs, ceremonies and rituals are like that? What if there is a god, but this god doesn’t require or expect anything from us? What if religion, and belief and everything of that nature is about our own needs and not a god’s?

Several years ago, I had an online conversation with a few people about religion and spirituality. I explained that I believed that religions were cultural expressions and that none were literally true, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. I also said that for some, spirituality was personal and that they felt no need to engage in an organized religion. For some, spirituality isn’t about certainty, or dogma or ideology. I went on to explain that I believe that if there is a god, no one can have absolute understanding or awareness of this god because for god to be god, god would have to transcend our reality. A god can’t be another being alongside other beings. So if there is some kind of spiritual force at work in the universe, it wouldn’t be something you could find or prove. Therefore, doubt would always accompany belief. (I got this idea from Paul Tillich.)

A woman who claimed to be either agnostic or atheist wanted to know how a person might be aware of such a remote, mysterious god. I said maybe some had experiential awareness or a feeling. Her next question took me by surprise. Since one can’t prove a feeling or an experience, she wanted to know if this caused a problem for the believer because they’re unable to prove their belief. I thought I had made it clear that belief wasn’t necessarily about foisting your belief onto others. Now I wonder if this women who insisted that she had no use for religion wasn’t influenced by the Christian idea—an idea heavily stressed by evangelicals and fundamentalists in the U.S.—that human beings are in need of saving, and that their salvation depends on having the “right” belief.

Maybe most of us have been influenced to some degree by this idea…if there is a god, then we’re required to do and believe a list of things, jump through certain hoops, or we’re in trouble. But I’m not buying it. I don’t reject the possibility of a god, but a god who needs or demands we sacrifice animals, or dance naked under a full moon, or believe in a son who died for us… Well, I think beliefs like that say more about us than any god.

I don’t care what people believe. No matter if there’s a god or not, I don’t think it makes any difference except maybe to us. I don’t discount the meaningfulness of the beliefs or experiences of others. I just wish that more showed a bit of humility when sharing their views. I find belief and ritual fascinating, but I don’t like to be told what I should believe. I don’t like to be around those who make strong assertions. Maybe because I was around people like that while growing up, and I felt belittled by the attitude. What I felt and believed didn’t seem to matter. If I didn’t have the “right” beliefs, I needed fixing according to these annoying people. In being so dismissive of my experience, I felt they were dismissing me, and they were.

The subtle art of bantering often escapes me, too.

Yesterday, I finished The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I’ve seen the 1993 film version starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson several times. I enjoyed it a great deal, so I’ve wanted to read the book for quite a while, but for some reason, I never got around to it until now. The film is a faithful adaptation. What I found most surprising was the fact that the book is a diary kept by Stevens during his trip to meet Miss Kenton in 1956, twenty years after she left Darlington Hall to get married.

The book defies the conventional wisdom that a writer of contemporary fiction should show rather than tell. Most modern writers try to keep exposition to a minimum while striving to put the reader in the middle of the action and conversations as much as possible. Ishiguro does allow us to watch certain scenes play out, but most of the time, Stevens is telling us what happened rather than showing us. It works beautifully because by climbing inside of Stevens’ mind to such a degree, we see most clearly how self-deluded he is.

In a way, Stevens is a stuffed shirt. He is all about duty and dignity and carrying out his responsibilities, but Stevens is not a puffed-up blowhard as many stuffed shirts are. There is little arrogance and condescension behind his professional façade. Stevens hides behind his role as butler and comforts himself with the idea that by serving a well-intentioned employer to the best of his abilities, he is doing his part in preserving his country and the world at large. He does this because Stevens is intensely shy and has few social skills. He is most comfortable interacting with others as a butler. The subtle art of “bantering” escapes him.

At the end, after learning that Miss Kenton (now Mrs. Benn) has no interest in returning to Darlington Hall to serve as housekeeper, Stevens realizes that he let the love of his life slip through his hands so he could go on serving an employer who turned out to be a fool and a Nazi stooge. His abilities are on the decline, and the grand English country house he was once so proud to work in is now owned by an American. It has become a relic. The staff has been greatly reduced. Most of the rooms have been closed off. The quiet remains of the day is what Stevens has to look forward to.

I strongly relate to Stevens. Thankfully, I’m not so self-deluded. I know that being around people makes me uncomfortable and that this is the reason I withdraw from them. But life has a way of slipping by no matter if you’re up to the game or not, so I understand how Stevens could find himself alone on the verge of old age and wondering if he has wasted his best years.

Religious Freedom

For the first three centuries following the death of Jesus, Christians were a small minority in the Roman Empire. Like most minorities, they faced persecution. Many didn’t like them. It was rumored that incestuous orgies, infanticide and cannibalism took place during their worship services. Because the pagans believed that their gods became angry and punitive if they weren’t worshiped, the Christians were sometimes blamed for natural disasters. It was believed the Christians had angered the gods by denying them. Christians were sometimes viewed with suspicion because they refused to worship the state gods or recognize the divinity of the emperor. Christians were so marginalized and disliked, they were sometimes killed. In this atmosphere, Christian apologetics were born.

Tertullian was an early proto-orthodox Christian writer (c. 155 – c. 240 AD) and Church Father. One of the ways he advocated for greater tolerance and acceptance of the Christian faith was by arguing for religious freedom.

Wikipedia: “Among his apologetic writings, the Apologeticus, addressed to the Roman magistrates, is a most pungent defense of Christianity and the Christians against the reproaches of the pagans, and an important legacy of the ancient Church, proclaiming the principle of freedom of religion as an inalienable human right and demands a fair trial for Christians before they are condemned to death.”

As I understand it, this was a fairly common stance among the early Christian apologists. Then the idea was quickly dropped when Christianity became the official religion of the empire.