More on Sim and Spirituality

I was pleased to read this entry on Dave Sim's Blog & Mail today. I realize it was written last week, but I had so much going on that I just wasn't able to keep up with all the blogs I regularly read (haven't been able to for a while now, in fact), so I just this minute read it and wanted to comment on it.

But, before I do, I want to make it clear that the reason I am saying these things here and not responding directly to Mr. Sim is twofold: One, it makes for good content; two, Dave Sim doesn't accept e-mails and I don't want to get involved with his Yahoo! cult or write him a printed letter.

Now, Sim addresses a reader's comments and makes some very good points -- many of which I agree with completely and two of which I disagree with stringently. The latter I have addressed in part before: That Mohammed (sp?) was God's last prophet and the Koran was God's final word. This, I do not agree with at all, for all sorts of reasons. Sim also professes his belief that Jesus was not God's son, but rather merely another messenger. I see no difference because I believe that we are all God's children (though that is not to say that I agree with the Creationist concept, I do not).

To say that Mohammed was God's last prophet... well, I don't think that it's wrong to say such if that's what you believe, but I simply don't. And I think it lessens peoples' faith and hope -- not to mention has a dramatic effect on people who are classified mentally ill (martyr, savior, and God compleces, to say nothing of Paranoid Schizophrenia and Manic-Depression with hallucinatory delusions). 

I could have sworn that one of the scriptures said, literally, "There will be prophets," but I have searched for it and not found it, so it's very likely that I am wrong. Unfortunately, there is no way to be certain, since God's True Word is almost impossible to divine from the Scriptures, no matter what version you read. No one knows who wrote the first Biblical Scriptures and there is no doubt that much of it has been lost to history, corrupted in translation, and changed to fit the will of the rulers and the peoples to which it was given. Also, committees of men decided which books would be included and which would not, so no matter what version of which Bible you read, not all of the original texts have been included. Further, it is extremely important to put the Scriptures into historical context, because a lot of the prophecies and ideologies expressed therein had everything to do with the times in which the speakers lived and the peoples with whom they were involved - meaning that they are not applicable, by the letter, to today's age.

The problem with Scripture is the same as with the law: far too many people work way too hard to maintain the Letter of the Law and not the Spirit of the Law - semantics. The Scriptures are also often contradictory, according to whomever wrote them and the time at which they were written. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, some of the greatest, strongest, most faith-based and honest attempts to follow the Lord have been made by people who came to the Lord later in life - people who, at one time, spoke strongly against Him and denied Him completely, but later changed their tune.

People not unlike Mr. Sim himself (though I have yet to find anything he has to say about God to be groundbreaking or even in the right direction - yet I have hopes and could not be happier that he has decided to make this an important facet of his life).

And the Koran does not rectify with the Bible; they are two different religions in which God is the only real commonality. I don't think Sim's doing himself, nor anyone else, any favors by attempting to rectify them, though I find the attempt admirable and I think it has some religious merit.

These are inarguable facts. To say that God no longer speaks through His people is to say that God has separated Himself from us, which is to say that we are damned, for I truly believe that Hell is not lakes of fire and brimstone, but the Eternal separation from God. This also infers that we should turn a deaf ear to the ministers, preachers, priests, clerics, and other Men of God whose job is to help we laymen interpret His Word (even though I do not mean to imply that all of these men are prophets).

As to what I do agree with, well there's a lot:

God has hidden Himself from us and we do not know exactly why. In my line of thinking, it has to do with the Original Sin and this is part of our sentence - that He has separated Himself from us can be interpreted as being expelled from the Garden of Eden. This is what led to the whole idea of the Creation of Woman, as God knew that, without Him, Man had to have companionship, love, and (hopefully) acceptance.

But, having said that, I don't find it at all unreasonable to think that this could also apply to homosexuality. Homosexuality is a natural thing, and I say this because it occurs naturally in animals. Animals are God's creatures and I don't feel they are being tested by God in the same sense as we humans largely because they can't... you know, read, or understand the Gospel, as it is spoken unto them. I don't believe that animals go to Hell and I don't think that they have free will as we do. I also don't think that those who are forced into homosexuality - or at least into performing homosexual acts - in order to survive are technically homosexuals (in particular, I am referring to the condoned homosexual flesh trade within prisons - one openly condoned by the guards and prison officials, who benefit from it in more ways than one, though this has no real bearing on the conversation in any major way). A sex trade openly condoned by most Fundamentalists and self-proclaimed Christians who pay nothing more than lip service to their faith and claim this is "God's Will" - a perfect example of men who have done Bad Things (and this is different from simply being Bad Men) and are "getting what they deserve."

The condemnation of homosexuality in the Old Testament (and the very few instances of such in the NT), I believe, stem directly from the speakers' desires to turn Christians against the Romans, in which the practice was widespread and acceptable. Not to mention that Christians were a small and hated portion of the society at that time (Christianity was, quite literally in Roman times, a cult), and procreation ("go forth and multiply") being set forth as the only acceptable reason for sexual relations was a direct result of the burgeoning religion attempting to increase their numbers. Christ, Himself, never spoke on homosexuality. In Leviticus (New Testament), male homosexuality is condemned, but we are also told to burn bulls, as the smell is pleasing to the Lord. So if you cling to the one as the absolute Word and not the other, you are picking and choosing what the Lord said to fit into your own ideology, which means you are dictating which of God's laws you respect and intend to follow and dismissing others... which means you are recreating God in your own image.

And the last point on this is that prostitutes were mentioned all throughout the Bible, and basically only The Whore of Babylon was condemned... oh yes, and also the male prostitutes. Moses said unto a harlot, "Please, might I cleave unto you?" and fathered a child by her. He left his staff behind so that he might later know who the child was. Mary Magdalene has historically been thought a prostitute, but there is no way of knowing whether or not this is true.

Islamists, Muslims - whatever - believe that all the Prophets were married, which obviously excludes Jesus, even though Jesus is said to be present in Heaven, not as the Son of God, but as just another Wise Man; he is present, but he holds no special standing above and beyond that - the same idea Sim professes to believe. This being the case, is he saying he upholds only the OT and dismisses the NT? And since Jesus delivered a message almost completely against the accepted beliefs of His time, was considered a Heretic, and put to death for it, how can he justify his consideration of Jesus as a Wise Man and not a Prophet? For that matter, what is the real difference in the two? After all, Jesus is said to have performed Miracles, just as the other, "accepted," Prophets.

Yes, I think that issuing ultimatums to God is fundamentally "tempting Him," but only in the Fundamentalist sense that questioning God is a sin. Of course, according to Fundies, what isn't? Not accepting your body as God made it is a sin, but so is nudity; cursing and homosexuality and working on the Sabbath - these are all sins - but in this day and age, especially knowing now so much more than what they knew back then, we have to accept that sometimes these things simply cannot be avoided.

And not all of these things are supported by the Scriptures. Wasn't it Jacob who wrestled with the Lord in his dreams, while on a beach? Didn't God best him by giving him a blow to the liver or some such, which is what made that part a sin to eat? And didn't Abraham question the Lord when he was told to sacrifice his only son unto Him? And, on that note, we only know as much about that little story as we are told in the Scriptures: what is to say that Abraham actually got to the altar and simply could not go through with it, and so came back down the mountain and told people that the Lord came to him at the last moment and said that He had only been testing Abraham? We don't even have Abraham's first-word account; it was passed down to us second-, even third-hand. Why did God tell Man to turn the other cheek, then unleash whole armies onto others and tell them to circumcise them in revenge for the rape of their sisters?

While we know not to tempt God, "tempting" and "questioning" are two completely different things. Further, God has responded to such "temptations." Do you really think that, at some point in his hellish ordeal(s), Job himself did not question God's continued abuse of Him, His refusal to intervene in what is, beyond question, one of the most awful stories in the Bible - one of the stories which should cause any serious reader, any serious Christian or would-be Christian to ponder God's Nature and His Will?

If we are indeed made in His image, and He reserves the right to test us at any and all times, if God is said to have spoken to Oracles and Prophets and told them what to do - sometimes tricking them, ostensibly to test their faith, even if He never delivered them, regardless of the strength of their faith, or waited to the very last moment to do so - but we are also told that the Devil does such things, how in the world can we be sure that what we are told, hear, think, or feel are ever right if we do not question His will?

Being made in God's image makes me think - and I could be very, very wrong - that He is capable of the same range of emotions and thoughts as are we. And this makes me less worried about the times when I have hated God, questioned Him, railed against Him - even when I believed in Him completely. I have often told my parents I "hated them," knowing full well I did not, but the situation and my emotional and mental state at the time made me think I truly did. I have regretted these times, but as I grow older and amass more life experience, I have come to accept that these times were understandable reactions to what I felt - at that moment - were a betrayal by God. And I know, in my heart, that God understands them because , if I am made in His image, and He is capable of great anger and wrath, that anger and wrath are part and parcel of His image - thus, being made in His image dictates that I will sometimes feel anger and depression and hatred and pain and humiliation and that these are natural feelings I should not suppress just because I have been told by false leaders that the only way to God's graces is to blindly accept what I have been told is His One and True Word. A one and true Word passed down by messengers to Man, whose limited capacities forced them to make of the messages what they could, further filtered down through oral traditions later filtered into written word (some hundreds, even thousands, of years after they were first heard), further filtered down by hand-copied translation, further changed by monarchs and committees of men.

Not to mention that, historically, a lot of the stories were adopted from pagan cults, religions, and practices the Church co-opted in order to bring more people into the Church; and that some things - such as the story of Noah, in particular - predate Christianity by eons and were integrated in order to make God more accessible to their peoples. And then there are the umpteen wars (such as the one in which we are currently involved) in which Christianity has been the catalyst. Not to mention the omnipresent corruption of the Catholic Church (originally called the Roman Catholic Church, thanks to Claudius I's acceptance of the religion, seeing it as the logical extension of the Roman empire), from selling absolution from sin (Fornication Under Consent of the King), not to mention the torture, abuse, and wars against the Cathars (because they were said to owe money to the church, were accused of Heresy [including rampant homosexuality and other "deviant" sexual practices], as well praising a living abomination known as Baphomet)...

I have always considered Mr. Sim an incredible sequential artist, an iconoclast, and intellectual, but I've never considered him a Christian or spiritual man. I love that he has since changed his tune and fully support his continued movement toward this pursuit.

I just disagree with a lot of what he is preaching. I know his outlooks on many of these things will change over time but, if he is serious about learning more about the Lord and His Word, I feel he should enter into discussions with more knowledgeable people on the subject. Which isn't easy, since the Church leaders have laid down on the job for decades now.

And I absolutely support his decision to join no church.