The Power of Christ Compels You

One of the things which was brought to mind for me in reading St. Augustine's work was his obsession with demons and his attribution of all sorts of (admittedly fantastic) phenomena to them.  

When I noticed this I started to think about all of the other ways in which both Christians and other religions attribute their misfortunes to supernatural intervention.   A great many psychological illnesses and syndromes, for example, are thought to be the work of demonic possession.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoA-dBREM5c

In many cultures diseases are thought be caused by demons, the deaths of livestock or crops is thought to be the work of witchs, and there is even a superstition (still fairly common today in some parts of Africa) that a man's penis will can be stolen by a sorcerer and hidden away somewhere.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN2319603620080423?feedType=RS

This got me to wondering why the belief in these agencies of supernatural evil was so widespread and universal.  After awhile I realized that it was part of the same mechanism which brings about belief in gods.  

When we are young children we often have difficulty telling the difference between animate and inanimate objects, especially when they pose obstacles to us.  The chair which falls on us or the door which slams on our fingers is doing so deliberately, we think. 

As we grow older this idea fades away and we realize that these things have no will of their own, but we also internalize the idea that things do not just occur on their own: they must have some kind of motive force.

Thus, we have the tendency to attribute things to an invisible force when we do not know what caused them to occur.  Good things to God (or gods), bad things to demons.  If early man didn't know about disease contagion or weather patterns, these very dangerous events would seem like deliberate attacks upon him, which in  turn would lead to rituals designed to avert these disasters, a well known facet of religious experience.

The largest problem with this occurs when the demon explanation is retained even at the expense of a more logical explanation (such as disease being caused by bacteria) is presented.

Saint Auggy.

Once you get past St. Augustine's apparent obsession with demons, he seems to be advocating a sort of pack-rat mentality towards learning, wherein every single fact could be used to get a clearer view of the scriptures and is thus worthy of learning.

This idea of learning as an approach to God is something which has very deep roots in Christian tradition, despite an equally strong tendency for reactionism and closed mindedness.  Some of the groundbreaking scientists in the western world where strongly christian (Newton, Copernicus, etc) and we pretty much owe the survival of our written language to a few monasteries in Ireland. 

Religion on the upswing.

I've noticed that religion seems to employ a dichotomous role in our society.  One the on hand our entire legal system is founded on the idea of secularism and more and more people are declaring as atheists/agnostics.  On the other hand fundamentalism, strict adherence to all parts of religion even when they are inconvenient or incompatible with modern life, seems to be on the rise for all faiths.   As followers drift away, those who remain behind get more and more fervent in their belief.

I am inclined to think that this is a self reinforcing process.  There are few things in life which are as disconcerting as someone who is highly vocal about something with which you disagree so the atheists and fence sitters are gradually pushed away from religion.  The religious people, for their part, feel threatened by people who deny the truth on which they have based their life, so they become even more vocal, which in turns alienates non-believers even more.

This is why we get so many religious groups these days which seem to drop the more friendly aspects of their scriptures and lash out with hate (islamic jihadists, the religious groups who say that soldiers die because we tolerate homosexuality, etc.).

This is an unfortunate tendency which is present in alot of other areas of our lives where one group identity collides with another.  I don't really see a workable solution, other than trying to be open to the idea of multiple identities.

God Smash!

The image of God which is presented to us in the 18th psalm is extremely warlike, a far cry from the loving and forgiving God that most of us learned about while growing up.   The odd thing about the imagery being used, however, is that it raises the implication that God is less powerful than the omnipotent omni-being much of the Bible presents him as.  The fact that he requires a cherub to ride upon or darkness to hide behind calls to mind the way people portrayed the "lesser" gods of polytheism, who were far closer to being human with the addition of some specific divine magic.  

This would make Psalm 18 ideal for appealing to people who would have a hard time dealing with the idea of a ubiquitous God capable of doing anything.   By seeming to lessen Him, the psalm actually casts Him in a more sympathetic light and allows Him to avoid Superman Syndrome (wherein a character is so powerful that it is impossible to form an emotional connection with them or care about their trials).  

It is far easier to imagine and emphasis a God who rides into battle with specific magics than it is to make a connection with a being who can solve problems by willing them to go away before they happen. 

Historical Relevance

 Odin, the ruler of the gods.
One thing that has started to interest me lately is the idea of historical events influencing religions and working their way into sacred texts.  

Since people who partake of a religious structure tend to assign absolute truth to it, any and all experiences can and must be worked into a context which is compatible with their religious views. 

On a small scale this can lead to ideas like "Rich people are rich because God wills it so" or "It's raining because you forgot to propitiate the Spirit of the Rain."

Some events however, are just so huge that rather than being explained in terms of a religion, they go the other direction and alter it.   An eclipse at the right time or a battle lost can have an immense influence on the think of those effected.

A relatively well known example comes from the bible, specifically the Plagues with which God afflicted Egypt prior to the Exodus.  These events (which basically boil down to plagues, ecological disasters and astronomical occurrences) would have been so earthshaking in their effects on the population that they would have been declared acts of God and forever altered the relationship of the faithful with their deity. 

The specific example which first brought this to my mind comes from a mythology which is now more or less defunct but which still holds a great attraction.  Ancient Norse myths, which form the basis for a great deal of Western fantasy and mythology (along with the Greeks) features not one but two tribes of gods (the Aesir who the Norse actually worshiped and the Vanir) which start by making war on each other and finally seal a peace treaty by exchanging hostages.  The Vanir who are thus exchanged actually become established members of the pantheon, meriting worship in their own right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Æsir-Vanir_War

A little extra info about the war between the Aesir and the Vanir.

This is interesting because that method of hostage exchange is very similar to those used to seal peace between warring clans the world over, not just among the Norse.   Whether or not an actual historical formed the basis for this myth, the political conflicts thus resolved were important enough to the Norse to actually warrant a place in their mythology.

The Evolution of The King

It seems fairly obvious to me that early American readers of the Psalms would interpret it as a reference to the fledging American nation/colonies.   The majority of the colonists were Christians of one stripe or another and the original colonies were still ruled by the King in England.  Given their world-view, their religion would designated them as god's chosen/anointed and as such, completely in the right when it came appropriating the land.  This seems borne out by the reference to "heathens" in the first line, as opposed to the "nations" we have in our version.

Their reasoning essentially boils down to this:  Their God created this world, thus all of it would belong them, the chosen people of that God.  It gave them a palatable religious justification for what was essentially a wide scale, long-term invasion and genocide.

It's something that we don't think about very often now, since we're so well entrenched, but when our ancestors first arrived in this land they were military invaders.   It's interesting to note that, since both sides where so deeply connected to their spirituality in everyday life, the enter process could be viewed in religious terms; an almost direct conflict between to irreconcilable religious structures.  

Aerial View

One of the things which strikes me the most about the Indian Mounds is that none of them are meant to be view beyond their initial construction.  Their very design makes them almost impossible to fully without viewing them from the air (something impossible for a people at the technological level of the mound building cultures) and after the initial effort of their construction, there would be nothing to draw attention to them as non-natural features.   They seem almost to have been designed to be hidden.  

The fact that their true shape would be most visible from the air reminds me of the Nazca Lines, which are similar in kind, if not in size.  The importance of these constructions seems to have been intensely personal, of significance only to the builders and their gods, not requiring any attention by outsiders to make them important. 

A System of Symbols

The symbolic importance of the Indian mounds comes from the fact that they represent and attempt to order the real world according to the internal symbols of their religion.   The clan symbols are inscribed in a permanent fashion upon the very landscape, where whatever significance they hold is publicly expressed.  It's as though they are branding the world.

Isolationism in Religion

One thing that has struck me as interesting recently is how often isolation or solitude plays a significant role in religion, despite its nominally communal nature.  The Lasceaux cave paintings were deep underground, the anchorites were on top of poles out in the desert, and monks of all strips inhabited isolated monasteries.  

Given that most religions seems to be social experiences it would be interesting to know where this tendency towards hermitism comes from. 

Personally I would guess that it comes about as a result of the intensity of the religious feeling, which sometimes is so overwhelming that the believer cannot devote sufficient to both contemplate it and live in a society at the same time.