I confess to being a slight Smallville addict lately. I realise that I'm a little old for such crap, but it has been interesting watching. Not the Clark Kent viewpoint, but mostly the Lex Luthor character arc and associated themes. It brings into sharp focus all the strange themes I've been noticing lately about popular culture - and has brought a straighter line to my own thoughts.
Comic book heroes and their associated villains are a major source for TV and movies these days - the creativity in Hollywood being at an all-time low (as it always is), they have to find it somewhere.
How did mankind first make itself 'gods'? I think worship melds the shape of them. It must be just me, in maybe paranoic dreamings at four in the morning; I can't help wondering about, yes, pantheons. "Pantheons" referring to groups of gods, that is. When I think about some of the oldest 'gods' mankind invented for itself, I realise it wasn't a conscious thing on their part.
Mankind seems to have an inherent tendency to bend at the knees (see Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett), and where worship isn't directed at God, because that would mean acknowledging someOne who is higher than ourselves, mankind invents 'gods'.
Let's look at Nimrod and Tammuz. Nimrod was "a mighty hunter before the LORD" (whatever that means), probably signifying the fact that he was something of a cross between an ancient Brad Pitt and an ancient Bruce Lee. Nimrod was one of the founders of the first settlement on the plain of Shinar. You know, where Dubya and co. have been dropping all their bombs. Iraq. Chaldea. Sumer. Babylon.
They built the tower of Babel to reach to heaven. This probably meant that they were doing a Shirley McClain (taking their clothes off and dancing around shrieking "I am God!!!" Presumably with their ancient equivalent of undergarments firmly on their heads). God destroyed their endeavour by confusing their language into many diverse tongues. They dispersed to 'cover and subdue the whole earth', which was what they should have done in the first place. And Nimrod died, eventually. They lived a long time in those days, presumably because the U.V. was less potent. There's all these theories... I wont bore you with them.
Nimrod's wife (I forget her name: Ishtar, was it?) was pregnant when he died, however. Her child was a boy, whom she named Tammuz. She announced that he was his father, Nimrod, reincarnated (We all know what trouble that particular theory has caused). This was sort-of the start of "family" pantheons. A father is deceased, a mother gives birth, the son takes revenge on the murderers and is usually some sort of reincarnation. The concept was carried on into the Egyptian pantheon as the Osiris, Isis and Horus legend. Osiris was murdered by his brother - Seth, I think it was - and cut up into various pieces, which were dumped in the Nile. Isis went and found all of them except the most important extra bit. Er. So she made a wooden one, yes, I'm serious - and impregnated herself, on the basis that one ought not to let basic anatomy get in the way of narrative causality. She bore a son posthumously (clearly nothing funny about it, then), named him Horus, and set him on Seth. Happy ending ensues, but not, of course, for Seth.
There was later a cult in Egypt, which spread to Rome, involving the worship of Isis - a pretty, demure woman carrying baby Horus around. I'm betting she wore a lot of blue. Astarte was a similar goddess to Isis, but she was the ancient female fertility goddess of the Minoan/Cretan/Carthaginian peoples; they would worship her and the "ba'als" by watching high priests and priestesses have sex on an altar/stage. There would then be a communal prostitution-orgy.
It would seem that Tammuz may have been a real person; but by about 1000 BC he was a 'god of the year'. He'd die in autumn and rebirth himself in spring, probably as a weird echo of the year-king rituals, or perhaps a pre-cursor. It was necessary, you see, to ensure that Spring happened at the end of every winter; ancient peoples would therefore kill a king of some sort to ensure that the 'gods' would send Spring (sort-of like the Aztecs killing millions to make sure the sun would come up. It made no sense...). Some idiot would volunteer to be a sort of pampered fatted calf for half a year, be killed and ploughed into the soil to 'fertilise' it, and then his 'tanist' would take over for the rest of the year. After a time, a young boy would be dressed up in gold robes to take the king's place, and then eventually just a ram was sacrificed (kings being pathologically averse to being gutted, I suppose).
This was all to do with the ancient matriarchal worship of women's fertility. The Queen would rule until the menopause, because her 'sacred flow' fertilised the land; when it stopped, she had to commit ritual suicide. At least she lasted longer than the king...
There are references to Tammuz in Ezekiel. God, in a vision, takes Ezekiel on a tour of the temple, pointing out different kinds of non-Jewish worship with understandable outrage, including an image of the male fertilising essence, the Phallus. Yup, they put a giant stone penis in the middle of the temple courts, and hoped no-one would notice. Among other bizarre rituals, there were "women mourning for Tammuz". Thus it must have been winter, when Tammuz 'died', and there were huge funerals and mourning rites, as far away as Crete and Carthage (in modern Tunisia), which became celebrations in Spring when he "woke up" again.
Thus the family pantheon intertwined with the Matriarchal rulership model. There was an ancient Peri-Asian mother-goddess, known as either Rhea-Cybele or Kubaba-Cybele; the Romans brought her worship to Rome, calling her "magna mater", great mother. They probably regretted this later, as they weren't too happy about half-naked, shrieking eunuch priestlings flogging themselves through Rome as they carried her large "navel stone" around once a year, begging alms from the populace. Her consort was Attis, a castrated shepherd-figure in a floppy Phrigian cap (see Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series, as she covers this in quite a lot of detail). A major rite was half-insane worshippers castrating themselves out of devotion to her, which may be taking things a little too far... Argive Hera and Diana of Ephesus were similar mother-goddesses, Diana of Ephesus (with attendant meteor-stone) being a dumpy little thing with three pairs of breasts, apparently. To me it just says Animal Husbandry, I don't know about you.
Why is it that mankind works so hard to create itself new pantheons? Useless little super-heroes to fulfil all their desires and act out their fantasies? I think about the cartoons of today, the action figures, the comic book heroes, the heroines and their Lassoo's of Justice and Fertility, or whatever... I can't help thinking it's all a complete crock. It's man trying to become God, instead of admitting that God became a man. Humankind's most damaging trait is taking outstanding humanity and lionising it until it becomes a substitute for their Creator... claiming that creation creates itself. It saddens me.
As a Christian, and there was never a time in my life when I wasn't aware that God and I were going to get together sometime - I just kept putting Him off - I have studied religions, I have looked at paradigms, I've played around with mythologies. And I found myself never believing any of it.
When I read the psalms David wrote in his searing pain and self-recrimination after stealing Uriah's wife and then murdering the guy when he couldn't cover up his adultery, I find a real person. Someone who screamed to God across infinities, demanding a fogiveness he didn't deserve. And got it, because his heart always sought God. David's foibles are so real, one can see so deeply into what he was up against, and what he did when he got to the top... I find that legends and myths about people and their dealings with sylvan deities or titulary goat creatures is somehow such an empty parody.
When I look at cute little floating beings like spun crystal in pastel colours, with silly little voices and shining light around them, I think: "Who are you trying to fool?" God doesn't need to glow and glisten and ooze pretty purple light to let you know He's God. He's so bright you couldn't look at Him and survive. He cloaks Himself in deep darkness, and His voice is like thunder on mount Sinai; all the people screamed and fell down and gibbered and begged Moses not to let them hear God's voice anymore. It was too much ungraspable might. They felt sick and wanted to faint. Their lives could never be the same. They had tasted and seen. God dragged them out of slavery against their better judgement and propelled them into His Promised Land in spite of themselves. They would never get over it. They were used to jackal gods simpering around tombs, dung-beetle gods pushing the sun across the sky, cow-headed goddesses who forbade killing livestock. Egypt was a land of skinny humans and fat cattle, like India.
But our God is a consuming fire. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. People can't understand Him, for that which we understand we can manipulate. "Give me what I want, and I vouchsafe thee many sacrifices." God doesn't want sacrifices; He wants mercy. He doesn't want us to fawn over Him to get what we want, to be placated with sacrifices to keep Him quiet. God wants *US*. He wants a living relationship with us, us foolish and self-centred little twerps who toil in circles on a dustbowl planet like locusts in a hedgerow, to love us like His own children. In His place I might have blasted Adam and Eve to smithereens and started again... He came to earth and lived like one of us, a peasant carpenter before bandsaws were invented. God had splinters. No doubt He still loved the tree.
His hands were rough, His eyes squinted against the hot noon sun - without the Oakleys we tout so proudly - His feet were dirty in open sandles. God sweated, He carried heavy planks, He dragged logs and hammers and big adzes around. No namby-pamby little new-age love-biter could do the same without losing the shine on its deceptive little halo; the pretty packaging would fall away in the face of work. Of suffering. Of pain. God maybe sprained an ankle; he got down in the dirt to lift us up. He never told us the pain didn't exist. Anyone who tells you Christians shouldn't suffer if they had faith is a liar. Suffering has always been there. Suffering is a part of life. A God who loves the world makes suffering meaningful. If there was only an uncaring universe, if everything created itself by chance cos someone spilt coffee on the gyroscope, where is the meaning? There is no purpose if we don't have meaning, and there is no meaning without a God who is Love. I can't know why suffering happens, and I've had my share, but I do know that an uncaring universe wouldn't notice. God's written down your every tear. He made a record of every day of your life before you were born. He cares with an immediacy that no new-age "deity" or self-help guru could ever do, for his perfection is a perfection of Love, and mercy always triumphs over judgement.
Got bad karma? Your kid got run over by a bus and someone told you it's because you were a murderer in a past life? You're in agony and it's *your* fault. How self-realising is that? If you share concerns with anyone who spends all their time selling inner peace, they get impatient and tell you to chant your mantra and pay money to your ashram, give flowers to your guru, read the Koran, or something. Anything to buy some peace, right? Some meaning?
Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not be afraid."
"Giving as the world gives" means demanding payment; freely we have received, freely we must give. As we Christians receive God's forever-love, His all-surrounding, all-subsuming embrace, how much more are we required to take His peace and joy to a hurting world? Why do we sit in our silly little churches and forget about the lost, the broken, the hopeless? We're too used to taking the Gospel to those who've already heard it. We don't take it to the ones who are dirty, starving for love, crying out to the One who loved us before we knew Him. How else to show our love for Him, than to feed His sheep? To help heal His lambs, to bind up the broken-hearted? Until we do Jesus' work on earth like He asked us to in Matthew 19, how will we show the world what God's love for humankind truly is?
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