Halloween Special 2: Horror Stories and Evil

Our horror stories say something about the areas of evil that still awaken deep disgust and fear. It shows, in some sense, that we are still aware of good and evil on some level. This Halloween, I'd like to visit the legend of the Cauldron Born. J.K. Rowling's Voldemort was hardly the first Cauldron Born in literature. Lloyd Alexander's The High King and The Black Cauldron did a nod to the Cauldron Born. Before that, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein explored the Cauldron Born motif in a proto-sci-fi direction. Some modern fiction flirts with genetic engineering as a potential for horror, for creating a terror beyond our control.

What is so horrifying about the Cauldron Born, from Frankenstein to Voldemort? It's not that they're alive, nor that they're human. The problem is that they're not fully human, that they're masquerading as human but something has gone monstrously wrong. Something is lacking in these would-be humans, and that lack makes their powers frightening.¹ I think the appearance of cauldron born beings in literature -- engineered by human hands -- explores our discomfort with the limits of what we can make through science or magic, and how that falls short of the life found naturally.² It mirrors back our unease that we may not, after all, know quite enough about what we are doing to be able to fully handle the results. It is, in its way, similar to the story of the Fall all over again: we have a temptation to godlike power and, with more knowledge but less wisdom, it becomes a dehumanizing and nature-corrupting mix with results that are difficult to predict and more difficult to stop. The same basic theme informs much of the environmental movement's fear: that our knowledge and our greed for gain have outpaced our wisdom, opening up the potential for catastrophe. In more moderate terms, it's a critique of the history of human attempts to control the world, including a critique of certain applied sciences, where history has proved a good few times now that our knowledge of how to do something has outpaced our knowledge of the consequences and side-effects that happen when we do it.

Close cousins to the Cauldron Born are the creation-gone-haywire themes. In recent times these have focused (unsurprisingly) on computers. HAL (one step ahead of IBM) from 2001: A Space Odyssey is always a favorite. So is the unnervingly dispassionate military computer who responds to a teenage hacker's request, "Let's play 'Global Thermonuclear War'" in WarGames in a way that threatens to destroy the planet.

These man-made horrors also reflect the old theological observation that evil does not have a nature of its own, but takes another nature and parodies or corrupts it. Evil's nature is defined by what it lacks.

But it's not a right Halloween post if I spend all the bandwidth explaining why the genre strikes a chord. Let's get back to the Cauldron Born. Nobody else I've read does the Cauldron Born quite as sickeningly as Rowling's Voldemort. For Halloween, and for the identity of evil, sickening can be a mark of having shown just how revolting evil is ... right? ANYWAY ...

It was as though Wormtail had flipped over a stone and revealed something ugly, slimy, and blind -- but worse, a hundred times worse. .... no child alive ever had a face like that -- flat and snakelike, with gleaming red eyes. ... (Skipping a piece of black magic done on behalf of the villain ...)

But then, through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron. ... Lord Voldemort had risen again. (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, various excerpts from chapter 32)

Happy Halloween!

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1 - It's debatable how much the "fundamentally inhuman" bit applies to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the movie adaptations. Is the problem in the created object, or just in our perception of it? Is the problem that we go beyond what we can reasonably handle, or is the problem that people can't handle "progress"?

2 - I know that not all of the "man-made humans" in literature turn out too badly. There's Pinocchio, whose life is not frightening to others, but personally sad until he becomes more fully human. This is much like the Tin Man in the Oz stories. But those get demoted to a footnote for Halloween! Tonight we explore the dark side of the story.

General footnote: Yes, I get impatient with those who do not see horror and science fiction as "worthy" or "serious" literary genres. They are the myths of our day where we grapple with the questions of life, death, and our place in the world -- or the universe. Granted that not all horror and sci-fi are high quality, still the same could be said fairly for any other genre.

Continuous Reformation: Imagine A Seminary Course Catalog

Do you believe the church should always be in reform? Imagine a seminary with graduation requirements and coursework that looked like this:

Semester 1

• The Fear of the LORD
  
• Humility and self-control
  
• Torah studies
  
• Proverbs and Psalms (musicians encouraged to bring instruments on Fridays)
  
• Stewardship
  

Semester 2

• The Prophets
  
• Knowing God: images of God, presence and promises of God
  
• Gifts of the Spirit 1. A seven-part course on wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of the LORD, and joy in his presence.
  
• Prayer and contemplation
  
• The great laws: love of God and neighbor. Required term project: participation in a Matthew 25-originated hands-on ministry.
  

Summer Practicum: hospitality

Semester 3

• New Testament: Gospels. Focus on knowing God through Christ.
  
• Gifts of the Spirit 2. A three-part course on Faith, Hope, and Love.
  
• Repentance and Forgiveness
  
• Leadership 1. Spurring others on to good work. Building fellowship.
  
• The Grace of the Lord
  

Semester 4

• New Testament: Acts through Revelation. Focus on showing God to the world through following Christ.
  
• Leadership 2. Delivering rebukes with gentleness and respect. Delivering encouragement. Forming Christ in your listeners by means of the Word. Feeding your sheep.
  
• Work of the Holy Spirit 3. Main emphasis on knowing God, on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A basic overview of other gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
  
• Perseverance and persecution
  
• Proclaiming Christ as evangelism
  

Final Practicum: Shepherding with wisdom and compassion.

Halloween Special 1: Night of the Living Dead

If horror movies tell us something about our culture's deepest fears, what do the zombie movies say? I think the message is this: that we are already living among the undead, shuffling through life without seeing, without feeling, without loving, without caring, without resting, without any thought but our next meal. And in those zombies, we recognize more than just the masses of unlooking, unspeaking people around us, but ourselves as well.

If I were to start an evangelism campaign among the children of the Age of Apathy, I think I might start with the zombies. They are the personifications of the apathetic age. How much more alive are we than they are? Are we really alive or are we just undead? What does it take to be more alive? I'd almost be willing to pass out tracts that had a zombie cover on them ...

Teenage Sunday School and Abraham's Sacrifice

Actually today we did a lot of Abraham -- a brief review of God's covenant, and of his rescue of Lot. But we spent the most time on the near-sacrifice of Isaac.

Challenge for the class: during the reading, listen for the answers to these two things:

1. Where did all this happen?
2. What's the promise associated with the place?

Read Genesis 22:1-14.

1. Where did all this happen? Moriah
   
2. Who picked the place? God did
   
3. What's the promise associated with the place? God will provide the sacrifice. (We also did a brief review of the fact that "God will provide" is what "Moriah" means.)
   
4. Sometimes authors draw on the Bible for inspiration, particularly Christian writers. Can anybody think of a book or movie with a place called "Moriah" in it? Not enough Lord Of The Rings fans in class today, only one got the reference to the mines of Moriah, and to Gandalf's sacrificing himself to save the fellowship there.
   
5. Does anyone know whether, in later times, sacrifice was important to Abraham's descendants in Israel? Yes, it was.
   
6. Does anyone know where they made the sacrifices? At the temple.
   
7. Does anyone know where they built the temple? On a mountain. In Jerusalem.
   

Read 2 Chronicles 3:1

Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.

1. Where exactly did they build the temple? Mt. Moriah. The same place Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac.
   
2. Who picked the place? God.
   
3. What was the promise that goes with the name "Moriah"? God will provide the sacrifice. (Which was a giveaway, it was still on the board, but I wanted them to see the connection.)
   
4. When it says "God will provide the sacrifice," what is the ultimate promise about? Jesus
   

Prelude: Children of the Age of Apathy

I won't make you readers suffer my poetry -- or experiments with verse, really -- very often. But I've been trying to get the feel for certain meters, and have also been thinking about reaching out to some of the frighteningly apathetic people I have known. And if this doesn't rhyme it's probably a mercy, really. I've read too many poems that the best you can say for them is that they rhyme a lot. This doesn't have even that to offer ... ;)

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Have you looked on beauty once too many times
To be gladdened by a flower or the sky?
Have you reached for hope to watch it slip away
Too often to stretch out your hand again?
Have you blown out all your wishes every year?
Considered death to be a well-earned rest?

Has a hardened heart become a commonplace?
And smiling hope now seems the lot of fools?
Has your frustrated and despairing cry
Gone unanswered til you give it no more voice?
Would honest tears now seem a sign of life
To know your soul is not beyond repair?

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I know, I know, some of those lines could be reworded easily enough if I wanted rhymes. But rhymes seem jarringly wrong for reaching out to people who smirk at the whole "smiling hope" scene.

Teenage Sunday School Finishes Genesis 3

Last week, due to a teen retreat, we had a different lesson for those who came. This week we were back to Genesis 3.

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Review

1. Before the fall, what were relations like between God and man? Good.
2. What were relations like between male and female? Good.
3. What was the main temptation that led to the fall? Being like God.
4. Is God perfect? Yes
5. If we want to be like God, how do we want to see ourselves? Argument followed. Do we see ourselves as perfect or not perfect? Does it offend us if we're not perfect? Everyone agreed we want to be seen as good and praiseworthy.

New Material

Read Genesis 3:8-10

1. After the people had done something wrong, what was their first reaction to God? Hide.
2. After we've done something wrong, how typical is that, to either hide from what we did, or hide what we did, or hide from the person who might not like what we did? (Stayed with it til some examples had been volunteered of times we've tried to hide what we've done in our own lives.)

Read Genesis 3:11-13

1. When God confronted them with their problems, what was their reaction? Excuses. Debate over whether the excuses amounted to lies, but everyone's agreed they were excuses.
2. How typical are excuses when we've done something wrong? (Kicked off with an example from my own life and stayed with it until some examples had been volunteered from the class.)
3. Get them to think about this: how much are the excuses because we don't want someone else to blame us, and how much are the excuses because we can't handle the fact that we did something wrong? Does the fact that we want to be as praiseworthy as God have any effect on whether we can handle the fact that we did something wrong? If we admit we did something wrong, what does that do to our idea that we're as praiseworthy as we like to think? Class looks like it doesn't want to be hearing this. Which, considering the topic, is ok. Made sure they got the point but then stopped before it was overdone.
4. What are things now like between God and man? Not so good.
5. What about between male and female? (Boys in the class spend a lot of time blaming girls. No girls in attendance this week. [Teachers obviously don't count, being semi-alien creatures anyway.] The boys knew they were being goofballs and I knew what the next section had to say about the blame game, so I just saved the response for next section ... )

Read Genesis 3:14-24

1. So when they were caught doing wrong, their first reaction was excuses and blaming each other. Was God buying it? No.

And out of time. Will have to work in the promise of redemption as a review point in the future lessons on redemption.

The Beatitudes: Water in the Desert of LIfe

This started as a reply to Japhy's comment on the previous post, but started growing ...

We must see God in times of joy, and seek God in times of sorrow. (comment by Japhy)

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It feels that way, doesn't it? I think back to the various times in life when I was completely overwhelmed. Not merely "overworked." Not simply, "It's a little rough right now but I'll get through it if I just hang in there." But when I was truly completely overwhelmed, over my head. Sometimes with bad stuff happening to me, or bleak prospects for what the rest of my life might look like, or problems with family members' health/sanity, or sometimes just disgusted with the realization that I have a lot of evil inside me.

The beatitudes were always like water in a desert to me then. I was thinking tonight (during a long drive) that Jesus' teachings are so unlike those of the other religions, and the beatitudes really were foremost in my mind among those teachings. Take, for example, the problem of despair. It's a real part of life. And compassion is medicine for it, and hope is the antidote. But at times like that, compassion and hope can be heart-breaking in a good way. At those "worst of times" parts of life, it seems like the whole world depends on me and I'm just not up to it. With the beatitudes, with the realization that I'm not alone, that God does love me, that it doesn't depend on me toughing it out, that things ride less on my endurance and more on God's blessing -- that can bring me to tears of relief. It's such a weight off my shoulders. It's like all the lights had been out and someone lit a torch and now the darkness isn't overwhelming.

That's how I see the beatitudes.

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On the off chance that someone will read this who doesn't know what Jesus said in the beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfield.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.