Nine Words
I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of the Bible as the literal word of God. Do some Christians believe God was directly invoked with every single step of the Bible, from original revelations, to transcripts, to translations, to printing, and at no point Satan ever got involved? A genuine miracle!?
Yet based on the Book of Job, the Satan is intimately involved in the affairs of men (and women), all the time, and apparently God wouldn’t have it any other way. So it seem highly unlikely he would have been kept from meddling with the Bible.
No, the-Bible-as-Word-of-God is a straw which Christians cling to, as the waters of God rise around them.
At the same time, if we take a line such as “He who is without sin, cast the first stone” (John 8:7), it’s hard not to see in it a transcendent order of articulated wisdom. The real deal.
(Compare it to a crappy imitation like “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”! What’s that even mean?)
If these words, attributed to Jesus, are a reasonably faithful translation of something actually uttered, at a specific moment in time, by a man who was—in some sense—not only the son of God but God-the-son, then doesn’t that sort of make them “the literal words of God”?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. These nine words (I have cut away the fat) encapsulate such a transcendentally simple wisdom that, if they were ever truly and universally applied, it would spell the end Satan’s dominion over the human soul, right here and now.
No more stones cast, ever again.
“The Satan” is the ostensible antagonist of the Book of Job. Without his challenge, there would be no Job, or at least no book. And the Satan is the principle of stone-casting: the Accuser, the Prosecutor. That makes “the Satan” a function, and not (or not originally or exclusively) an entity.
A function is something that anyone can assume. Lucifer only became the Satan—fell from grace—when he said “J’accuse!”
In the Book of Job, the Satan might even be meant to represent God’s own accusation of Job, and/or His doubt about Job’s virtue. This raises the fundamental question of whether we see—or practice—Christianity as a dualistic or “non-dual” religion.
The Satan in the Gospel is also the father of lies, meaning that he bears false witness, or accuses unjustly, presumably for some ulterior motive (pride, say, or envy).
In a follow-up dream to the one I mentioned last week, I was admonished by Jesus (in a gentle way) for pointing my finger at my cat. The finger-pointing seemed like it was also a sort of stone-throwing.
(I did, in fact, throw a large stone at one of our chickens the week before, when it was preventing me from removing a tick from a stray cat and I lost my temper. The stone landed and the chicken made a squawk and kept on squawking for quite a while. I felt terrible.)
As always, Jesus was right on point. I woke asking for his forgiveness.
It is indeed getting to that time of life (late 50s), to get right with God before time runs out. But it ain’t easy, Lord. To be singled out by Jesus is a burden as well as a blessing.
To be tested by God means the Satan won’t be far behind as the instrument of our testing. For what else is the Accuser (including falsely) good for?
Trial by Tulpas
And where better to face temptation than Facebook? Facebook, where I went to try and find a home for the four kittens that our cat gave birth to, on the first day of our recent mini-retreat. If that isn’t symbolically meaningful enough, hear this:
There were eight kittens born that day. Four of them died, four survived. The four that died were large and black (probably because the sperm that created them came from our unusually large black cat, the one I was pointing at in the dream). And yea, verily, since the mother cat was small, the large black kittens did not survive the travails of their birth.
Of the four that did survive, three were light (ginger), and one was dark (though not black). Verily, I say unto thee, unto the light all life will be given, and death shall come to the spawn of the dark. It was so transparently symbolic I got chills.
I do not use Facebook, but I keep an account for the occasional mundane purpose. I only have six “friends,” and never use my real name (I used Alfonso Garbanzo for a long time, and more recently “Land Made,” for casting the film project.)
I joined a group for the adoption of animals in Galicia, and posted photos of the kittens, saying they would be ready for adoption in late August. Expecting some likes and clucks of appreciation, instead, almost at once, the accusations began to fly.
Two people demanded to know why I had not sterilized my cat. It was now a matter of Spanish law, I was told, for all domestic animals to be castrated.
The response was so unexpected I didn’t know how to react, so I didn’t do anything. I was not there to get into a flame war. I trusted that, if I kept silent, the hecklers would go away and I could proceed with finding a home for the kittens.
A few hours later, however, I could no longer find the post. I posted it again. Almost at once, it vanished. I looked in my account archives and found that the two posts had been removed. Without explanation.
I messaged the admin of the group, who used the name “Patricia Patsy,” and whose pic showed a supermodel-type blonde. I posted a question at the group about the disappearing posts. I received no response to either; after a while, my third post was also removed.
In a state now bordering on horror, and with rapidly growing outrage, I wrote a brief summation of my experience and posted it on the main page. I private messaged it to several women in the group (the group seemed almost wholly populated by women), ranked as “significant contributors.” Since I knew my post would most likely be removed, I wanted other members to know what was happening.
I received no response to any of my PMs, but the post remained up long enough for one guy to respond. His profile was a photo of a muscle-bound bodybuilder, painted green. He wrote a line in Spanish that went something like, “No wonder you are getting blocked: what kind of person offers to ‘regalar’ (make a gift of) kittens? They are not toys! They are living creatures!” He then posted a line, all in caps, to CASTRAR EL ANIMAL!
To my slight relief, another guy had responded by asking, since we were not allowed to sell animals at the group, what were we supposed to do, besides gift them? It was an isolated moment of sanity during a rapidly escalating fiasco. And oddly enough, the second guy used almost the same name as I was: Javier Caballero. (I was going by Jacob Caballero, a rough translation of my real name.)
I responded to the green goon by saying that his comment was the most idiotic thing I had read in 57 years of living, and that this was saying a lot. A woman quickly responded with a screenshot from a Spanish newspaper article, stating that it was now illegal to own any pet for more than 6 months without sterilizing it.
If every cat was to be sterilized before procreating, I asked her, and so eventually there would be no more cats, was this their end goal? The thread was removed before I received an answer.
The following day, I discovered that I could no longer see the group page at all, not even with a Facebook search. It was as if it had been erased from existence. Or as if I had.
(Over the Paywall: When Kafka Comes to Facebook, Response and Retreat, The Right Use of Stones, Why Did Jesus Doodle in the Dirt?)
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