About Those Old (New) Gods...

They are important to know.

We like to think of Molek and Ba'al and Beelzebub and Asherah and Hadad and Dagon and especially the great and despicable El (not to be confused with the real Elohim (our God.)) as these old idols of an ancient past that predated organized monotheism.

Nonsense.

Molek and Ba'al and all the rest, though well-established in Canaan at the time of the birth of the nation of Israel, are new gods. Very new. And, though the Ugarit religion is long dead, the spirit of the old new gods shines just as brightly. We feign intellectual naivety so that we can enjoy their attraction without guilt. Because we don't know our Moleks from our Asherah poles we can block their influence from our mind.

Have I become a sedated pupa, blissed out in the Matrix? Do we even know who our new gods, our old gods, are?

WDJD trumps WWJD

Theologian Greg Herrick writes in Baalism in Canaanite Religion and Its Relation to Selected Old Testament Texts * that "it behooves us to utilize all ancient resources available to us in order to uncover the thought-world and religious milieu in which men penned the very words of God. While there is always the danger of leaving the text in history, this should not detract us from seriously engaging the historical data we have, lest we fall off the other side of the hermeneutical horse and modernize the text to our own peril."

In other words, study as many authentic ancient texts for context as possible but don't wash out the salt of scripture in the process. Herrick is right to be more concerned with our common habit of modernizing scripture.

Jesus isn't my CEO. He's not yours either.

*What? I heard about it on Leno.

We're Gonna Score! One More! Than You!

Ricky Hatton fights Floyd Mayweather on December 8, but I don't need to tell you that.

What I do need to tell you is that somehow ever since Hatton called MoneyMay out after the Castillo fight, the song Vindaloo by Fat Les has been cycling and cycling and cycling in my head.

Now it's cycling in yours.

Happy?

Screwtape on Science

"I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The 'Life Force', the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work -- the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls 'Forces' while denying the existence of 'spirits' -- then the end of the war will be in sight." (pp. 30-31, Letter 7 from the Screwtape Letters)

That old bureaucrat nailed it. The materialist magicians of today may only be the forerunners of the Greatest Ever, but man, are they good. Take a good look at sci-culture, junk science, scientific dissent and tell me again that sorcerors have become a byword.

The University of Thanks (or...Thank U.)

A gifted and hard-working* artist whose work I deeply admire reminded me to be thankful today. I'm really thankful for the garbagemen, without whom I'd have very little to eat, as I've thinned the goat and roast-beef, three cheese chili dog herds of late.

I'm so grateful for my wife for her great qualities, including her low standards for a mate. I thank God for these kids who I can only hope fall irreparably in love with Our Lord. I can't believe the ready kindness that has been shown to me by people of more substance and greater handiwork than I can begin to reflect.**

While I'm thinking of it, I need to tell everyone reading this that they have been invited into a loving friendship with the only living God.*** That is something for which my thanks do not, and can not, end.

*I know she works hard, because I've read it. The gifting is obvious, but so is the work - you know. Picasso was talented, but so was Michelangelo, and Michelangelo also worked like a dog. Yeah. That kind of difference.

**One night, as I squatted, clubbing rats into planks to decorate my sleeping-hole, I looked up at a shadow in the sky. I reached for it sort of absently, and though I had to stretch to reach it, my hand found its rocky surface. I pulled my self halfway out of the hole, but could go no higher. Suddenly, many hands from secret places descended, drawing me higher. I looked around, the shadow-casting rock that I'd been brought to was the loveliest I'd ever seen. Nice and craggy with charming butcher's blade edges.

"Uh, thanks," I said to these strangers in the dark, as I turned to drag the rock down to my tomb. "Thanks for helping me get this rock."

The strangers laughed. "That's not the rock we want you to try for," they said, pointing upward. "That is."

I looked up. I could only see the moon.

***Now you have no excuse.

In Love with a Slaughtering God

The wrath of God has shielded billions of people throughout history, including you (that is, me) and me (that is, you) both. We never talk about that. To the believer, His wrath is a barbaric vestige of a time in His evolutionary past, or has been replaced by the love of Jesus. To the unbeliever, God is an earthy construct created by man to hold a permanent grudge.

None of us acknowledge that the wrath of God, not man, has been poured out countless times in our history, cutting short all manner of evil. We bemoan evil, but how often to we really consider its termination? How often do we praise Him for cracking open the earth and sending evil men straight to sheol? When do we thank Him for the Philistine who drew Saul's reign of terror to an end? Do we still celebrate V-E day? V-J day? Did the Soviet Union collapse because of the goodness of our intentions?

Do you remember the last time you said: that was close?

The wrath of God is good and a flooded world is a world that lived.

Appearances Update

Last night, I was a guest on the Steve Allen Show. You might have missed me because Jack Kerouac went long, so Steve only had about 30 seconds for me. It went something like this:

Steve Allen: So, tell me, and forgive me if this sounds like the sort of question you might get from a publisher, but I'm curious...who constitutes your target demographic for readers?

Me: Well, Mr. Allen, I write really for two kinds of people, both the atheist and what I call "the believer in Anything." You know, both Charles Darwin AND Aleister Crowley. Both Arthur Conan Doyle AND Harry Houdini. Both Neitszche AND Maslow. Marx AND Keynes.

S.A.: But, all those people are dead.

Me: Pardon?

S.A.: They are dead.

Me: Oh. Yes, then. I write for the dead.

S.A.: And that's a paying market?

Me: No. Not yet.

Footage of my interview isn't up on YouTube yet, so I'm kind of worried it got cut off at commercial, but here's the first part of the Kerouac segment.

Scott Jorgenson Strikes Back Again...and Begins

Since I've officially declared myself the world headquarters of all things Scott Jorgenson, I would be remiss if I did not make you (that, is, me) aware of the new release of Fear of Girls 2.

If you've somehow missed Fear of Girls 1, you a) need to start living under a rock and b) should watch that one first. Because 1 comes before 2, except for the occasional 8-section puzzle inversion.

The second one, sadly, lacks the element of Christian parody that I loved so much in the first, but it makes up for it with a bunch of socially inappropriate gender issues.

Charles Hubbell (who played Doug Doug's older brother in the first, and portrayed the believer) is sadly absent, but I guess that keeps him from splitting the screen with eye-candy Tom Lommel.

In fact, Tom semi-personally (that is, not at all personally) asked me to send the link to FoG2 to all my friends. I have none, so I'm instead sending them to myself, via this posting. You can thank me (you) later.

FoG1
FoG2
FoG Universe at YouTube

Giants: Easier to Believe than the Alternative

These humans have an enormous physical range.

Robert Wadlow stood 8'11" and 490 pounds. He died from a foot infection when he was 22, and, I believe, still growing. Gul Mohammed stood about 1'10" and less than 40 pounds.

The sepulchre of Antaeus, the giant king of North Africa, is a megalith five meters high. When the ancient Romans excavated his burial mound, they indeed found giant bones, to their shock.

Of course, we can take comfort in the fact that our enlightened modern archaeologists casually point out that many elephant fossils can be found in the area.

Because, you know, those stupid ancients couldn't tell the difference between a human skeleton and that of an elephant.

Sure, the most logical explanation is that the ancient Berbers came across some common elephant bones and said to their people, "Oh, yeah, remember that one super-revered giant king of ours that we had so long ago? We, uh, found his skeleton at the, uh, quarry where all those dead elephants are. What say we bury him in a new tomb?"

Yeah, I'm sure there wasn't some goatherd in the crowd who piped up: "Uh, guys. Why did our long-lost dead king have tusks?"

Doesn't it make more sense that King Anteus was a really big guy who died and was buried by his people who revered him, and whose bones were later uncovered by the Romans? Why must we insist that a people who certainly would have known what elephant bones were somehow convinced that it wasn't blasphemous at all to pretend that a dead animal was their legendary king? Oh. That's right. Because ancients are stupid and we are more smarter.

Ah, this modern age. Where the least likely explanation now passes for the simplest.

Spilled Paint Buckets

This weekend, I stained the wood frame of a new window we had to install after the old one rotted away. I liked to think of the old one as a magic window, slowly revealing the world outside as it really was, until I realized what the window really was: a deluxe home-value depreciator.

Anyway, as I stained, I came to a very profound realization:

I would never try to paint a room with the help of my pre-school children.

We might survive the first thirty seconds after careful instruction, but pretty soon...

sploosh.

In a vain effort to unsploosh, I'd probably kneel down, fondue-ing my pantleg in Inland Green. Kid 2 would be in stagger-back mode, tottering toward the freshly painted wall.

splat.

Now, tears. More motion, more stains, travelling stains, stains that will ruin my whole house if I don't implement some drastic and immediate lockdowns of now screaming children who had only moments before joyfully joined me in a home improvement project.

I'm smarter than that. I'd never, ever do that.

Even if I did, I sure wouldn't invite all the pre-schoolers in the neighborhood over for a clean-up party.

I realized another thing: my Father will never take parenting tips from me.

When Abraham was called out and told he would be blessed with descendants, God invited him, and all Abraham's descendants, to a painting party.

"Abraham - look! All this land is going to be the possession of your children. What say we get to work on it? I'll start by giving you a son in your old age and blessing him."

"Okay, Lord. I'm happy to help you! Let me just find my spare servant wife. My regular one is, according to her, past her prime."

Sploosh.


Ishmael is born. Because God promised to bless Abraham through his son, nations would arise that would eventually present great conflict for the descendants of Isaac. The paint bucket of God was freely placed in the unsteady, childish hands of Sarah's doubt, of Abraham's panic. That paint would run down through generations, and at least according to a great deal of modern tradition, would even stain today's political landscape.

The examples are numerous: Jacob swiping Esau's birthright (and Esau begging for a blessing anyway), Moses begging God not to wipe out the worshippers of Baal (until, of course, when he descended from the mountain and witnessed the sin with his own eyes. Then he went bloodcrazy,) Jonah dodging Ninevah, all the negotiations of the Hebrews wandering in the desert, and so on.

Sploosh. Sploosh. Sploosh-a-ty sploosh.

Tears. Motion. Stains. Travelling stains.

Yet God looks on the havoc His children wreak and loves them enough to devise a way for them to be washed clean, to be presentable before Him.

His method involves stains, too: bloodstains.

As if I needed reminder, I am not like God in this way. Perhaps it is because, despite my protests, I still prefer my rooms like my tombs: whitewashed.

Yeah? Yeah!

Know what I like about white shirts, coughing on the soundtrack, food that throws food, drums, great lyrics and smiling?

Everything.

Thanks Matt & Kim. You are genuses.

I mean genera. Like Canis and Leucadia and Rotoides.

Dead Chickens and Kittens: A Love Story

When my grandfather was a boy, he was playing with a pet chick and a pet kitty. Bad combo: the kitten pounced on the chick and in his attempt to stop the attack (or in retribution, I've never been sure) Grandpa grabbed the cat by the tail and whacked it on the ground, killing it.*

Of course, the chick didn't survive the assault, either, so there sat my Grandpa, in the dust of an early-20th century Iowa farm, with two dead pets in front of him.

Somehow, this story helps me to endure the book of Leviticus. As I endure it, it becomes a living thing to me. All the repitition of clean and unclean, of skin diseases that have shiny spots or turn the hair white, of head lesions and animal sacrifice, of household mold and issues of blood, of conduct and order and isolation and detail, detail, detail - somehow this has come to life in my heart.

I think of the chick and the kitten and of keeping good things separate, of violence that blasts us far from what is good, of harmony turning to discord, of a trinity divided, of a great and fragile community under constant threat from within and without, and the steps crucial to its defense.

*My troll-roots run deep.

Unique Visitor...

Do you realize that you are a unique visitor?

Most websites, blogs, and uh, internet things are desperate for attention.

Not me.

I've begun to average nearly one unique visitor per day.

That's one too many.

Stop that now! Are you even reading the posts? Can't be. I installed a basilisk subroutine that turns all readers to stone. Or a chicken. I forget how the basilisk works.

In any case, unless you are pecking, literally, at your keyboard right now, you can't possibly have read the posts. Nor should you want to. They weren't written for you!

However, if you are still reading this, you should feel pretty special. You are the only one on the entire planet who is. Even if you are only 11/12ths of a unique visitor. Kind of like Michael Collins, orbiting the moon...never setting foot.

X.D. Songkiller Lives, and Lets Die

Okay, Paul (singer not the Saint.) Genius aside, I've never seen anyone so gracelessly allow a preposition to get the best of them.

"If this ever-changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry..."

The 40 year mystery is solved. Paul isn't the Walrus, but he is insane.

All Saints Day

It is All Saints Day.

That makes May 1 Half Saints Day, right?

Yesterday was Reformation Day, and of course I forgot to observe it*. Where can I buy Belated Reformation cards?

*Fortunately, Turner Classic Movies had our collective Christian back. They ran a Boris Karloff marathon in honor of Martin Luther's 95 Theses.