Religion | Gelflings At Play

Author: Molli
Tuesday 8th May 2007 at 8:00 pm
Category: Curiosity, Just A Theory, Religion, Stereotypes

Tags: blindness, cynicism, fanatics, fundamentalists, ignorance, lies

‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.’
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

First of all, I must state that I am far from being an expert on any of the three intermingled topics to follow. I feel compelled to write on these subjects because I have hit a wall of frustration and cannot see where the truth lies (pun intended!)

Earlier this evening my mother dropped by. She’d just attended a church meeting which hosted a lecture on Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ – I’m sure some of you have heard of it? For the record, my mum is a Christian…. a true believer. Also on the record, I am not. My only qualifications in writing on these topics are a) I’ve read ‘The DaVinci Code” and b) I’ve read The Bible. The former has been foisted upon the public as fiction and no one has come knocking at my door trying to sell it to me or threatening me with eternal damnation if I don’t subscribe to the statements made within the book. As for The Bible, it was spoon fed to me as a child and delivered up on cold Sunday mornings when I was dragged out of bed and off to church for my weekly bout of brainwashing. I guess I’m making my stance a little clearer, yes? I have nothing against Christianity and do, in fact, follow its basic tenets. For instance, I’ve never murdered anyone ~ well, not yet anyway. Nor do I covet my neighbour’s wife ~ she’s too old for me and I prefer petite over portly. As I’ve never been married, I can’t be accused of adultery ~ and I can’t recall a line in the ten commandments about aiding and abetting, although possibly my memory is failing on that count and/or I’m indulging in sheer sophistry. I don’t “take the Lord’s name in vain” out of respect for my mother ~ but I’ve been known to call out to him during some of the more climatic moments of my existence ~ how could that be wrong? Doesn’t such usage imply not only a degree of belief, but also an exclamation of gratitude, praise and acknowledgment of god’s miraculous creations? (Oh, how I love the body made in his image!) On the same note, I have yet to steal ~ not for lack of trying! I have merely borrowed and always returned him after I was done with him ~ in better condition than when I found him, I might add! I think I might be straying from my point here ~ sidetracked by memory.
Lets see, what else? ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’. Since I don’t have any on my list at all, the order of said list is a moot point, but I guess, technically, I could be said to hold true to this one. No graven images? Please god, explain why you created artists? Even primitive man was moved to finger-paint the walls of his home with the things he found beautiful and worth remembering and I find it difficult to believe that anyone who has created such things felt compelled to do so out of hatred for god. So, old fellow, you can keep your jealousy and your curses upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, okay? My, such petty vindictiveness ~ not a thing I want to find in a god nor a trait I have any wish to emulate.
Keeping the Sabbath day holy is easy enough. Only two things; firstly, is it Saturday or Sunday, I’m forever getting confused. Secondly, if the day is to be one of rest and spiritual communion, please explain, god, why you let my mother force me out into the freezing cold, placed me on a hard wooden pew and surrounded me with people smelling of mothballs and self-righteousness? She’s one of yours, god, so I’m guessing you condone such cruelty. Oh, and your representative at the pulpit? A mind on Valium with a heart to match it! You condemn a person for working on the seventh day and yet you made me endure that droning moron and spend two hours fighting relentlessly against sleep’s siren call? How much harder can a girl work?? As for honouring my mother and father, even your dutiful daughter, my mother, believes such honour should be earned. Don’t get me wrong, it was there as stipulated in the beginning, but a person can fail to hold a person’s respect and I think allowances should be made before you go pelting me with brimstone and cremating me over a slow turning spit!
I must admit that this one is my favourite, although I’ve already touched upon it:
‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.’
The day I get a hankering for an ass or an ox is the day I deserve to have my mortal coil ripped from my body as agonisingly as possible ~ none of this ‘gently shuffling off’ business

After all of that rambling, my point is that I’m a relatively good person and, while I don’t follow Christian teachings, I respect the basic premise and I certainly lean more in that direction than toward Satanism!

As for The DaVinci Code, I enjoyed it as a good read, nothing more. I didn’t rearrange my entire belief system ~ what there is of it ~ to accommodate the theories and speculations it contained. I didn’t run out to become a founder of a neo-Cathar cult. I can’t even say I was surprised or overly stimulated by it. The only reason I claim the last is because I read, a decade before, ‘The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail’ by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Two of those authors attempted to sue Dan Brown for plagiarism and I can’t say I blame them while, at the same time, they must realise that their speculations were also lifted from other sources and not original. To quote Wilson Mizner, ‘Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.’
At any rate, I read Dan Brown’s book and thoroughly enjoyed it as a work of fiction

Now finally to the point of all of this. (You knew I’d get there eventually ~ didn’t you?) When my mother called around tonight and I enquired about her meeting, she unleashed a ‘fact’ on me which I have been unable to verify. What she said was that, supposedly, a Muslim financed the majority of the making of The DaVinci Code film. To me, I care as little as if she’d stated that a person with green eyes had done so. Seriously, so what? Yes, sure, Muslim fundamentalists went on a psychotic rampage when cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed were published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, back on the 30^th of September, 2005 and, from there, were quickly disseminated around the globe. From what I’ve read on various Christian web sites, blogs and newsletters, they feel The DaVinci Code is a far greater attack on their religion than anything Muslims have had to contend with, and are all busy patting themselves on the back that the Pope hasn’t issued a papal bull ordering the death of Dan Brown and the leading stars of the movie which followed. So far, I can’t find a single non-Christian source to back up this claim of Muslim funding. If anyone can provide me with a reliable source, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, it’s almost irrelevant to me. What frustrates me more is that a great many of the people reporting such things have not even read the book and seem to conveniently overlook the fact that it is a work of fiction and never claimed to be otherwise. What fascinates me is the response to it from the Christian community. Aside from their lack of curiosity (I LOVE playing ‘what if?’ The more far fetched the better!) there is also such a huge outpouring of what can only be referred to as ‘the lady protests too much, methinks’ ~ said lady being the church. What I want to know is, what are they all so afraid of? Why so threatened? If their own faith is strong, why should they care what others think, say or write? Shouldn’t a true Christian feel nothing but compassion and pity for the poor schmucks who are ‘taken in’ by such ‘nonsense’? Why this overwhelming need to defend their religion? Is their conviction that they hold the truth so fragile that they worry those yet to join them will be seduced by ‘the dark side’? Surely the truth should be self-evident and not need a PR rep. and people running around taking care of damage control.
Talking to mum tonight, it seems she believes that EVERY book written after the bible is fiction. I get frustrated on a few levels. One, yes, I’m a tad envious of her indomitable belief in ‘and they lived happily ever after’ ~ even if one does have to die to be blessed with such happiness. Two, since she became a Christian (around twenty five years ago, I think), I’m not sure that she’s let a single other thought inside her mind. Her belief seems more a barricade to me than a gateway to truth. When I question such simple things like: ‘But what about the job of translating the original works into English? Aramaic is a difficult language in that it has many a line and a squiggle attached to individual letters ~ tiny little marks which could easily be overlooked or misplaced, thus changing the meaning of both the word and the sentence. When it comes to a possible confusion such as ‘Jesus walked on the water’ rather than the possible ‘Jesus walked by the water’ how can one not be curious about the possibility of error? Then we have reports of new papyrus fragments found, long lost gospels and other archaeological findings which may change ideas that many hold to be facts. But no, she will not hear of them. They’re not in the bible, therefore, they are not The Truth. I have tried discussing aspects of the bible with her because I WANT to understand and, I’m sure, there’s a part of me that wants that blind trust in something bigger and better, more kindly and organised than myself. I have tried and, while she doesn’t seem to react as though I’m attacking her ~ which I’m not ~ too many of our conversations have devolved into three words from me: ‘But what about?’ and from her: ‘Because it just is.’
That answer would never have satisfied me as a child, how could anyone expect it to satisfy me now??
It’s not an answer; it’s a belief. Without it, I can’t understand her and, without a sense of curiosity and the wonderful mind game of ‘what if?’ she can’t understand me. As I wound up saying to her after I’d spent an hour or so banging my head up against her bible, ‘There is none so blind as he who will not see. That can apply equally to both of us.’
The thing is, she only considers me blind. She knows the truth!

‘I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.’
~ Galileo Galilei

‘I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.’
~ Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925

‘I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.’
~Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

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