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God is a Heretic
I just found a great article from John Mabry called God the Heretic. Mabry has a great collection of articles here, and also runs a small press called Apocryphile. I’ve also spoken with him on the phone and he’s a nice guy and very helpful.
In any event, here are some choice quotes from this short article:
As upsetting as it may be to the more conservative people of faith, God is not concerned with other people’s notions of what She can or cannot do, nor where the Spirit can or cannot lead those who listen to Her. In this way, God can be said to be the wild card of the universe. “The Spirit goes where it wills,” says Jesus to the conservative Pharisee Nicodemus, “you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going.”
In his time, Jesus was the fundamentalist’s worst nightmare. Here was a man who habitually made disturbing statements that often hinted at his being God. Blasphemy! Yet, as Christians believe, God chose to become human. If that was heresy to the Jewish fundamentalists in his day, very well. God is a heretic. I doubt He loses much sleep over this.
Nowadays, with the archetype of the Goddess arising in the collective consciousness of the people of this planet, the Christian fundamentalists are up in arms about the Goddess “heresy” invading the church. I think we would be wise to remember the mistakes of our past, and to be open to the wind of the Spirit, especially when She ventures into unlikely places. If God wishes to be known as the Goddess for a while, why should that upset me? Instead, I should be listening close, because I wouldn’t want to miss anything! If the Goddess is heresy to the Christian fundamentalists, very well. Again, God is a heretic, a fool, a trickster, a joker, a wild card. God does not need the permission of Jerry Falwell or the Traditional Values Coalition to do His work in the world-or His play!
Well worth reading that and other articles by Mabry. Highly recommended!
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December 6th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
it is amazing to me to hear how jesus offended christian sensibilities with his irreverent and blashemous statements. there was no christianity until 300 years or so after his death. we tend to see things through a christian lense. jesus and the people living then didn`t.
December 6th, 2005 at 7:25 pm
Good point, Alistair. Jesus was referring to the Pharisees, not Christians. And before Constantine implemented Christianity, it WAS heretical to believe in Christ– those Roman lions were sure well-fed.
And it brings up something inside of me: if someone wants to think of God as a heretic in order to align themselves with him/her/it, then I have no problem with it.
But if God doesn’t require the permission of the Jerry Falwells of the world to do what he/she/it wants, then it follows (logically? illogically?) that neither do other human beings.
Ever had a teacher who tried to convince his students that “Math is fun!”? Maybe for him it was, but for me it was a drag, and I resented the teacher’s attempts to pander to my personal tastes just so that I could experience the “fun” of math. I would have rather had the boring math assignments in their pure form than some watered-down version that emphasizes a property that does not exclusively belong to a concept such as mathematics.
I mean, yes, there are some people for whom math is fun. But I think it’s sad when math needs to be sold as such in order to gain favor with other humans. And whenever people try to re-define what God is, it comes off the same way: as pathetic pandering.
In short: I wish more atheists and former religiosos would just be honest and say they’re too lazy to get up on Sundays, instead of all this high-falutin’ nonsense.
December 6th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Hm, I don’t see this essay as pandering at all. But much of Mabry’s work seems to be written for a mainstream religious audience who is struggling to grasp what people who are different from them are doing. Is that what causes it to seem watered down to you?
December 6th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
And eye laughed and eye laughed and eye laughed ,watered down,high falutin,no-sence
December 7th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Eyensane, you truly are insane, and I like it!
December 7th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Wha? Eye? Eye? Battle of the eyes! Welcome aboard, eyesane. eye’m glad to see another eye here, though eye’m wondering who you are now! Do eye gno you?
This blog entry is a good complement to the other one about gun-running preacher pop and the drive-by anti-Holloween.
December 7th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
Maybe “pandering” is not the right word… but there’s something in his tone that makes me feel like he is preaching to the choir. When a writer uses words and phrases such as “As upsetting as it may to [insert presumably upset party here]…” or “I doubt [God] loses much sleep over this…” he is setting a particular tone with his/her literary voice, even if it is only a blog post or an essay. And that voice is snide in my ears, and does nothing to inform those on the other side of the fence. It may succeed in getting people who are on the fence to fall onto one side or the other, but we don’t need self-consciously clever writers to do that– gravity works just fine.
See? I just did what Mabry did, in my last sentence of the previous paragraph!
December 7th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
LoL, james, what I think you are referring to is qualifying one’s argument. It does weaken some, especially if used too much, but it can also be used to relate the writer to the audience. Of course, if one relates too much, then the information loses the original power of the author’s intent.
As for psychologically, its great towards people on the fence or beyond the fence, but does very little for people who view themselves on the same side of the argument. People on the same side just want the guts of the information, the power, they have very few differences (other side) or insecurities (on the fence) that need to be addressed, and thus they find such qualifying statements to be trivial and useless.
December 11th, 2005 at 12:23 am
The primary motivation behind Christian fear of the Goddess is fear of the revival of female dominance. They would have you believe that women never had power, when in fact women once ruled the world. When things were balanced genetically there were far more of them, than there are of us. The fact that God was a woman was obvious, for the numbers of women to men where higher, and all things of beauty were women.
Since the advent of marriage, the scales became misbalanced, of course they would tell you that they are in-fact now balanced, but our numbers were not meant to be even. Men were stronger, and it was no longer obvious that God was a woman, or that woman should rule. Men overthrew the dominion of women, and overtime tried to cast out the idea that Women ever ruled, more or less ruled first.
These last ten thousand years have been the history of man, but we are much older than that, and we do have a history that goes back further. All the single god oriented faiths of this world fear the discovery of those ancient buried secrets, for they might empower women once more, and restore the old balance stealing away the power of men and their religion.
–Victor Wrath, The Heretic.–
December 11th, 2005 at 1:41 am
Nice, Victor, but my question is, why can’t God be a hermaphrodite? Who says that believing in the Goddess, or believing in the God, is the correct way to go about things?
I agree that the symbol of “god” directly correlates to who is in power, and what type of power structure it is, but does “god” have to be man or woman? For that matter, does one gender have to rule over the other? Why can’t mankind embrace it’s other half, and return to the origin, before, in the Greek mythos, the gods cut them into two, a man and a woman.