Tuesday, January 7, 2014

20140107.0811

A number of my colleagues are posting the following image as their profile pictures on one of the more prominent social media networks:
Source: Satanic Temple / AP (http://nation.time.com/2014/01/07/satanists-unveil-statue-for-oklahoma-capitol/), used for purposes of reporting/commentary consistent with Fair Use doctrine; no challenge to IP rights is intended
It is a sketch of a proposed statue to be erected on the Oklahoma State Capitol grounds by a New York Satanic church in response to an Oklahoma policy or law that allows for privately-funded religious displays on public lands, as noted here and here.  The law, which has also prompted some Hindus to petition for a display of their own (noted here), has faced challenges from the ACLU, oddly enough led by a Baptist minister.  The ACLU objection is the expected one about violation of the establishment clause via the selective acceptance of the submitted statues (as seems to be happening with the "temporary ban" on displays other than the already-accepted Ten Commandments piece), while the minister's objection derives from the idea that a secularized display of religious iconography trivializes the faith it represents.*

I cannot say that I do not find the joke funny--and I know that my friends mean it as a joke.  I am also not about to go off on some rant about the way that even displaying the image allows the influence of the Fallen; the image has only so much power as is invested in it by those who observe it, and the powers that are in the world can appear as they choose (is it not an article of Christian faith that the Most High assumed a lowly form to save Creation?), so I am not worried about the image corrupting me.  Nor am I worried that by looking upon it or even reporting on it here I will incur the wrath of the Almighty; if I have merited divine censure, I did so before I began to write this morning, but I choose to believe along with the Good Doctor that God has a sense of humor (yes, I am aware that Asimov moved away from religion, but I am also aware that he expressed the hope that "God loves an honest atheist").**  The god I worship may well be looking upon the whole affair with bemusement; I do not presume to account for the particulars of the Wielder's reactions, but I hope God chuckles at human folly, or something similar.

Some things need to be satirized.  They need to be held up to ridicule so that, if the people who do them will not change their ways, others will look and see that something is to be avoided.  But I do not think that is what will happen in this circumstance.  I think instead that the satire--and I cannot help but regard the New York Satanists involved as setting out to satirize (along with the Pastafarians I have heard are working to get involved), even if I think the Hindus (and, yes, even many of the Christians) are sincere--will fall on deaf ears in most of Oklahoma and will work only to a passing disdain among those in the rest of the United States, while the rest of the world will shake its collective head sadly at the infighting insofar as it notices at all what happens where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.  The minds of none will be changed, for the minds of none (or so close to none as matters not) are open to being changed.  We are all of us arrogantly convinced of our own rightness and righteousness--including me--and of the wrongness of those who do not agree with us; we view the other as willfully and irredeemably stupid or willfully and irredeemably sinful, and neither attitude fosters the understanding that is the only way to make things better.

But if I am going to be on one side of this, I will be with the one that is willing to laugh at things.  It is a better sound than angry shouting.

*I am aware that my use of Christian News may strike some as odd.  Consider, though, that if even a purportedly Christian organization is reporting that a prominent Christian leader is against an ostensibly Christian display,† it cannot be quite so much a "godless liberal media" campaign to strip religion from public life in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

**Both can be found in Asimov Laughs Again.  I am not going to hunt up page numbers at the moment--seriously, this time.

†Ostensibly because Christ was more about the spirit than the letter of the Law; even though Christ remarks that the law will remain in place, He points out in the same passages several insufficiencies in it (Matthew 5).  Righteousness does not come so much from adherence to the Law but to the love that undergirds it.  And ostentatious displays evidently annoy Christ, anyway (Matthew 6).

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