The Deed and the Doer

On a T-shirt, a rainbow, and a play on a sacred word, there is offence enough to summon a mob. 

Yet before we take up arms for our gods, we might ask whether Western Christianity would truly accept an Arabic Christ, and whether we have the sense of the old cow, who eats the hay and leaves the baling wire.

This is a reflection on symbolism, belief, and the fine but firm line between the deed and the doer.

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An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Where Offence Begins

Religious symbolism, individual perceptions, and beliefs provide many opportunities to take offence. This became the core of a conversation in which I was invited to comment on someone wearing a T-shirt depicting a religious personality, with a play on one of the final words of supplication or veneration, all set in the context of human sexuality.

At first glance, there are so many things capable of causing offence, ranging across a spectrum from the merely unfunny, through the disrespectful and the sacrilegious, to outright blasphemy.

Each could attract anything from a simple flinch to an outrage that seeks out a mob for retribution, all in response to this perceived denigration of symbols and language. Such reactions often arise in the quest for an expansionist embrace of all things represented in our humanity; a sometimes-worthy goal, though one that needs wisdom in its deployment.

I will not dwell on the particulars of the item itself, for my concern is not the object but the impulse it stirs in us; the principle interests me far more than the personality behind it.

Confrontation and Its Limits

I would suggest that the confrontational approach sets people up against one another. It might well be a way of challenging norms, yet it is rarely the means by which one wins converts.

In terms of religious figures who walked the earth more than a millennium ago, it is quite unlikely that anyone truly knows what they looked like. The pictures we see of them today are figments of human imagination and artistry, quite awesome and commendable, but not real. For those who claim to have had visions or apparitions, my view is that revelation is only presented to the limit of one's capacity to perceive.

Depictions and Idolatry

Depictions might offer a sensual connection to the unseen, but they do not replace it; to think otherwise opens one's appreciation to a form of idolatry. Then again, depictions can be instructive or misleading. 

For instance, the European masters have in many cases depicted Jesus Christ as Caucasian, with northern Scandinavian features, when, by reason of history and region, He would most likely have looked Arabic. Such features would not have made Him seem alien, nor His parents, when they sojourned in Egypt at the time Herod massacred every boy-child in Judea under the age of two.

The question then becomes this: would Western Christianity have been amenable to an Arabic, Black, or Asian Jesus Christ? Now, that is to court controversy, meddling with images and depictions preconceived to accentuate belief, yet upended by reasonable supposition.

The Lesson of Gideon

I am reminded of the story of Gideon in the Bible, who one night destroyed the idols of his community, so that they rose up to put him to death. His father was able to convince them to let the offended gods avenge themselves.

We should be careful of emasculating our deities by offering to fight for them as though they were utterly powerless, because the deeper issue is this: if a god cannot fight for himself when slighted, what is the power we believe he possesses? Gideon came to be known as Jerubbaal.

Belief and Fellowship

We all believe differently, to the extent of our own persuasion, and we do let the beliefs of others influence us, hopefully to buttress what we know rather than to pull apart and pull down our creeds. At worst, those who choose to meddle with the elements of our foundational beliefs put themselves at risk of forsaking our fellowship, communion, and friendship.

They might be misguided, but it is impossible to read motivation or intent from afar; we are left with our conscience to decide. One may hold an act to be unwise, even unnecessary, without presuming to indict the one who acts; the deed and the doer are not the same thing.

Perhaps I feel quite unperturbed because, in the admonition of one preacher, I have as much sense as an old cow: I eat the hay and leave the baling wire. The beliefs we hold are like seeds sown, which will grow in the ways we allow, for the ground of our hearts tends the seed to be fruitful, affected by heat, thorns, or weeds, for it is in these very things that offence reveals itself.

Keeping Offence in Perspective

Yes, we do get offended, but we must limit the impact to two things. First, the offender acts in a foolishness that does not engender the best of our humanity. Secondly, for all the offender does, I do not attach myself so closely to any man that I cannot cut loose when he is falling into the ditch.

The offender might be worthy of rebuke, and in extreme situations they might find themselves in receipt of mob violence. Even where the latter could be justified, I would not subscribe to it. We are allowed to deviate in how we believe, and to break away if no compromise can be found.

At the intersection of symbolism, language, depictions, and beliefs, the apparent offence of any one thing is kept in perspective. Another's journey, leading to redemption or perdition, is theirs alone; I refuse to follow in folly.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Lil Nas X - MONTERO - The Pied Piper is here

Setting it up

There is something about Montero Lamar Hill, also known as Lil Nas X that is enthralling, engaging, and arresting. Now, I am not a fan of rap music or any music where the apparent absence of enunciation leaves you having to attune your ear to patterns, rhythms, cadences, and much else to understand what is being said. I guess I will always need subtitles.

A story in antiquity tells of the town of Hamelin in Germany where an infestation of rats might well have introduced a plaque. Then came a stranger who promised to rid the town of the rats for a payment, he did do so playing his pipe and attracting the rats out of the town into the River Weser where the rats drowned.

On returning to the town to collect payment, he was refused. The Pied Piper then returned one day, playing a magical tune, had all the children follow him out of town into oblivion as certain legends have it, never to be seen again. The evil of not keeping promises and treating a person with courtesy, respect, and dignity was visited back on the town of Hamelin by the loss of their children. [Wikipedia: Pied Piper of Hamelin]

The piper in his element

I just watched the video of Lil Nas X’s new release, Montero (Call Me by Your Name), it is filled with a lot of mystical symbolism, and the lyrics have much hedonistic context for suggestion, eroticism, homosexual sex, drugs, and drink. Whilst a lot of this is Computer-generated Imagery (CGI), he descends the longest pole into the belly of the earth where he apparently lap dances the devil before strangling him and wearing his crown, thereby sprouting wings like the angelic being that Lucifer once was.

You can imagine the outrage, hot flushes, disgust, recriminations, and agitation from people who think they are good parents, the conservatives and the religious at all this with their confected rage about protecting children and all that. Let’s hear what Lil Nas X has to say.

Your responsibility, not mine

To the parents: “I am an adult. I am not gonna spend my entire career trying to cater to your children. that is your job.” [Tweet] In another tweet, he writes, “I literally sing about lean & adultery in Old Town Road. U decided to let your child listen. Blame yourself.”

About the depictions in the video with a mind on the ultra-religious that have preached about homosexuals going to hell, he says, “I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the shit y’all preached would happen to me because I was gay. So, I hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.” [Tweet]

So, there you have it, you tell someone that he is going to hell because of who he is, he uses his creative talent to give you a vision of your words and you are angry about him, about it, fearful for your kids and much else?

Love your rats or pay up

Therein is the advent of a modern-day Pied Piper, the parents who loved the music but failed to listen to the lyrics and gave their children full rein to enjoy the song and the video that won even a Grammy are like the people of Hamelin who were happy to see the rats piped out of town.

Now, as Lil Nas X has continued to showcase his talent with a full expression of his sexuality and giving life to the stereotypes thrown at many of us who just happen to be gay, everyone is pulling their children away, but they are hooked and joyfully following the Pied Piper.

The morale in every case is, pay up, pay your dues, pay what you agreed, be nice, reckon that difference does not make others less human, if you cannot show love, it is unnecessary to express vitriol and hate.

An appeal to our better selves

Be careful what you wish for, whatever nasty thing you say to another might well become a picture of your worst reality, at which point, you have nothing left to fight with, the battle for hearts, minds, and souls, was lost when you dehumanised a fellow human being because of their sexuality amongst other things.

Like always, from time immemorial, just because you pick a fight with someone does not mean they will fight you back if there is someone or something else that pertains to you where they can get an advantage. Love heals all things, hate destroys many things, including our faith in humanity.

Lil Nas X, thank you for being your true self, for that alone, you might well be in front of the queue to heaven leaving your earthly detractors in the other place.

References

Montero (Call me by your name) – Lyrics from Genius

Old Town Road (Remix) – Lyrics from Genius

The video; not for the faint-hearted, watch with caution and prepare to be shocked. (Parent & Grandparent advisory.)

Opinion: Finding Against The Gospel of NOT - That EHRC Judgement

The rise of religious politics

Each time I think about the ministry of Jesus Christ when he trod the lands of Judea and Samaria as depicted in the gospels I am at times wont to channel Mahatma Gandhi when he was purported to say, “I like your Christ but dislike your Christians.”

Over the last few decades or so, a brand of this religion has emerged which looks very much like modern-day expressions of other Abrahamic faiths, political Judaism with its cauldron in Israel has held the world to ransom with Gentile guilt for the Holocaust and other pogroms that go back centuries, political Islam first expressed in Saudi Arabia, then radicalised in Iran before it was hijacked to be become a potent terrorist movement once spearheaded that the Al Qaeda crusade and political Christianity.

This, I dare say is more widespread and finds expression in social issues that polarise, attempt to ostracise and in terms can be quite discriminatory in a world that is tending more towards secularity than the Dark Ages of moralising sententiousness.

The Christian right and wrongs

In America, it started with the abortion wars, then the issue of homosexuality, gay marriage and stem cell research. God or at least the Christian God is inserted into every debate of the right to have slaves then to prayer, to bear arms, to limit opportunity where a majority of Americans are not by any stretch of the imagination native to the land they have colonised corralling the Native Americans into reservations with money-making casinos and attendant mental issues.

In Africa, they have not rallied round the cross Jesus so succinctly said they should bear and follow him but around an obsession with homosexuality as observed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and a gullible flock of bees feasting on the narcotic pollen of the prosperity gospel.

The activist Christian

In Europe, homosexuality and gay marriage and aggression secularism taking hold in our societies have become the gospel of Not as preached by the Holy Padre in the Vatican, who without much distraction cannot have been oblivious of the clergy who have said mass in the name of the Catholic Church whilst satisfying their lascivious tendencies with the innocence of the small – much prosecuted for redress and justice in North America and Europe but no one has lifted the lid on possible heinous deeds in Africa, Latin America or Asia.

The issue of women having titular roles in the Anglican Church is as engaging as it is disheartening much as gay marriage, abortion issues, reverse missionary journeys – where Africans are coming to Europe to open churches along with pervasive issues of financial impropriety or excess – our televisions have become the means of intruding on our lives without necessarily affecting our lives.

It isn’t Christians in the love for humanity

The most compassionate of our humanity campaigning against grinding poverty, debilitating disease, bad governance or war are hardly religious, they are pop stars and billionaires who openly shame the many followers who have long departed from the ideals of the founders of their systems of faith and have become activists portraying a sense of being under siege from the world around them and being discriminated against.

That many have conflated persecution which comes from adherence to faith with discrimination which is borne of taking social positions against secular norms that allows for diverse strands of humanity to live in some semblance of communal bliss is most interesting and it is exemplified in symbols and beliefs that seek to discriminate and differentiate, ostracising those who in a secular setting have a right to service denied them by those paid in public service to be professional about their vocations.

The cross and the belief

Four Christians having exhausted all legal process in the UK when to Europe to seek redress and a judgement on the matter was pronounced on Tuesday.

Two of them were challenging the decision of their employers to exclude and sanction them for wearing crosses and the other two working for social service organisations put their beliefs before the interests of people who presumably have lifestyles they disagree with.

I am glad that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) proffered arguments that came out in support of one and against the other three.

Christian identity most morose

On the matter of wearing a cross, whilst it might well be symbolic of Christian faith, it is not mandated as an expression by law or doctrine that practitioners of the faith should wear a cross to portray what some have called a Christian identity.

Christian identity in my view is political-speak and if what that means is wearing jewellery moulded as a cross and a representation of the amazing gospel of the man that walked the roads of Judea and Galilee two millennia ago, then we are much poorer for what it really represents apart from the fact that it has patently lost its power to affect people’s lives.

Christianity is supposed to be a light and lamp, a light to gain perspective of beauty and a lamp to show the path when one walks in the dark. That same light when shone brightly into the eye for all the goodness and pleasure it bring to sight and vision, risks blinding the person – In other words, it should never be in-your-face whilst at the same time efficacious.

Reasonableness always wins

I can very when agree that it is reasonable to wear a cross in the workplace as long as there are no requirements for sterility in a controlled environment like a hospital. It would be trite to bring up the matter of whether cross wearers do sterilise their crosses and that is beside the point that there are many who wear crosses that are hardly Christian in belief or in practice.

In the case of the other two, one with professional duties of conducting marriages on behalf of the state and the other trained to provide relationship counselling, in a society comprised of diverse belief systems and governed by a compromise of secularity that seeks to get everyone to co-exist, it is antithetical to professional conduct to refuse to despatch services you paid to provide because of a sentiment.

Our secularity is paramount

The need to separate church and state cannot be more pertinent than to have individuals arrogate to themselves rights that conflict with community in order to prove a religious point – we do not live a theocracy and we do not believe the same.

It goes without saying that I am of the opinion that if such people intend to place their beliefs above secular co-existence, they should seek employment where only their beliefs are paramount.

The moment we engage with the public we become subject to the norms that promote societal cohesion as is necessary for the compromise of secularity we have adopted in our somewhat mature civilisations that confers the freedom to religion but not that right to use it to discriminate and contemn the lives of other members of our diverse humanity.

Where I stand

I take no positions on any of the matters I have raised apart from these reasonable views, we should protect our children from sexual exploitation and pursue to the ends of the earth anyone who have abused and violated children for any ends.

The matter of abortion should be between the woman, her doctor and her conscience, if health issues are of significance, then the law should support the safety of the female over the consequences for the unborn.

That the Israeli-Palestinian issue should be brought to a resolution that allows Israel to exist safely whilst restoring a greater sense of dignity to the Palestinians in their land with all that rightfully belongs to them.

To reason to all

That the separation of religion and state must be inviolable, Christians do not own the institution of marriage and whilst their beliefs are widespread their views cannot be allowed to denigrate the beliefs and lives of others – we need to reach an accommodation and that is mostly on the side of religionists than on the side of secularists.

I applaud the judgement of the ECHR, there was no discrimination in the case of the three that lost; they tried to assume victim status to excuse their unprofessional obstinacy that many including the judges saw through.

The Gospel of Not has lost against the fight to live and let live – long may it be so.

Do not cross the cross

Handbagging rotten design

“Terrible, terrible, absolutely terrible”, she said as she covered those so-called “world designs” with a handkerchief and walked off with her trademark Salvatore Ferragamo handbag.

Years, before, they paid hefty legal fees, generous compensation and ate humble pie as their institutionalised “dirty tricks” campaign against a business man who does not wear a suit blew up in their faces.

The was the watershed, the comeuppance of the domineering influence of the bastions of British establishment as the common man refused to be cowed by overbearing and reckless abuse of privilege to perpetrate what is patently wrong.

Secular uniforms for the working pagans

Generally, British Airways just seems to find a way of hugging the spotlight for the wrong reasons which border on the inexplicable earning brick-bats from all people of stature till they are forced to adopt what is supposed to be the common sense view.

There are people who would promote the secularist argument about religious symbols and apparel, and this excites social and political comment nowadays with the veil and the burqa.

The cross, a symbol of Christianity was the centre of a debate that had the principled stance of a BA employee elicit the support of civil liberties and put the BA in the crosshairs of religious disappointment and political opprobrium.

Eventually, the fence-sitting Archbishop of Canterbury finally cantered into the debate having flown to Rome in a BA flight – read as a tacit approval of the BA stance or a lack of conviction on a rather serious religious issue.

The employee had gotten suspended for wearing a cross having not been able to reach an agreement with her employers to compromise on a basic inoffensive principle – visibly wearing a cross no bigger than a small coin.

Disappearing Christianity in Europe

This is not the only problem with the way Christianity is being consigned to ignominious irrelevance, you only have to visit a card shop and notice how few cards talk of Christmas and many more talk of Winterval, Seasons Greetings and so on – God forbid, the mention the Christ or Jesus – people might find it offensive to hear about Christmas but be willing to take the holiday and the knock-down sales of the consequent days.

We now have to apologise for being Christian in Europe as people cannot profess their faith publicly because a foreign but non-indigenous faith is gaining prominence. We know the dominance of those faiths in their origin-lands is used to persecute other faiths, with impunity.

Sometimes, it appears political correctness is thumping commonsense values to the chagrin of many and this is becoming unacceptable leading to growing animosity between formerly accommodating societies and the seething intolerance to visiting cultures.

Teaching an old dog …

Now, that BA has backed down from this unsupportable stance having made us cringe from the bluster of official-speak and semantics, the impending boycott of their services can be suspended. Till the bishop customer cannot wear a visible large cross, the imam cannot wear a turban or show his prayer beads or some other inspired idea that a publicity faux-pas official can dream up to bring the BA back into the spotlight of every stupid thing that exemplifies British-ness (Brutishness). Just what we need – every time.

If British Airways can learn any lessons, it would be, you must not cross the cross.

References

New Tory cover-up shock

BA turns tail on colours

BBC ON THIS DAY | 11 | 1993: BA dirty tricks against Virgin cost £3m

Christian BA employee to take legal action over suspension for wearing cross