Distant Gods and Interactive Religions!

          All right, before I begin, I’ll give a heads up: This is going to be an incredibly nerdy rant. Not Batman/Joker/Star Trek nerdy, but literary/religious/creative writing major in a lit class/philosophical nerdy.

            You have been warned.

            This semester I’m in a lit class that makes my geek heart skip. It covers world literature beginning in ancient times. We’re three weeks into the semester and we’ve already read Gilgamesh and The Iliad. Obviously this means that for two hours twice a week, I’m in Nerdvana. I love ancient literature and the cultural gems gleaned from it, the philosophical discussions that go along with it, and the inevitable historical comparisons that happen in these classes, even if they can be a bit ethnocentric. Okay, really ethnocentric.

            Anyway, yesterday in class, we discussed Homer’s Iliad. For those of you who don’t know the story…shaaaame! A plague on your house! It’s a fantastic story full of gore, rage, and the twists and paradoxes of the human condition during wartime.

            …shut up. I warned you it’d be nerdy.

            But for those of you who aren’t ridiculous lit nerds, The Iliad is an epic poem about the Trojan War in the time of Ancient Greece, focusing mostly on the involvement of Achilles, a half-mortal Greek hero. If you’re turned off to literature, I’d still recommend The Iliad. Some translations are really easy reads, and it’s packed with blood and guts and clashing weapons and corpse defilement. You know, all that good stuff. And for the record, it isn’t Shakespearean-type gore, where it’s pretty. No, The Iliad has lungs being ripped out of chests and eyeballs rolling in the dirt, crunching skulls, limbs hemorrhaging black blood…it’s brutal!

War is an even bigger mess with the gods poking their noses into it.

            In class, our discussion veered to the Greek gods, who resided on Mt Olympus. Now, as Americans, even if we’re atheists or agnostics, Christianity is the prevailing definition on what religion is, and the Christian God is the archetype for what a deity is. We can’t help it, it’s been hammered into our culture. We don’t even realize we do it. Just answer this question: What is a god? Don’t Google it (that isn’t the point), just answer it off the top of your head. Most people I know would come up with answers about prayer, faith, creation stories, omniscience, and subtle nudges in the right direction. God is all-knowing, can do no wrong, punishes the evil and rewards the good, sends us signs occasionally when we pray, blah, blah, blah.

            Well, the gods of Ancient Greece are completely and totally different. Far from being an abstract, immeasurable concept in which followers must simply have faith, the gods regularly materialized before their followers, helped and punished them face-to-face, even copulated with them (Zeus in particular was a gigantic manwhore.) In The Iliad, the gods don’t just sit back and watch the Trojan War happen and give their faithful gentle signs of the right path. No, they’re divided on who they’re even rooting for (both the Trojans and the Greeks worshipped the same gods.) And here’s my favourite part…some of the gods actually came down and participated in the war. Athena, Apollo, and Hera all stuck their hands in the war, and Zeus and Hera quarreled the entire time over which side they wanted to be victorious. Apollo plucked men out of the battle with is bare hands and led Achilles astray because he was going to sack Troy “before its time.” Athena posed as Hector’s brother to get him to fight Achilles, deliberately leading one of her faithful followers to his death because she favoured the other one. When Achilles missed Hector with his spear, Athena just reached over and handed the spear right back to him. That scene in the D Translation (which I would totally publish) goes as follows:

            Achilles hurls spear. Misses Hector entirely.

            Hector: HA! You call that a throw? I thought you were supposed to be a legendary hero! Seriously! I’m over here, dumbass! “Son of a goddess,” my Trojan ass!

            Athena plucks spear out of the ground while Hector brags and hands it back to Achilles.

            Athena: Dude, focus. I need you to win this. If you get the yips now, Zeus’ll never shut up about it.

            I can’t really picture God/Jehova/Yaweh doing that, and he definitely wouldn’t. The Abrahamic God, with a few stories (mostly Old Testament) aside, has always been a more hands-off deity, preferring to speak through angels, burning bushes, or “signs” rather than manifesting on a battlefield and physically yanking a dude off his feet. Even in his most involved stories, he was more distant than the Olympians.

            Faith is a word synonymous with religion in our country. I always hear it from my Christian friends.  True Christians have unwavering faith, we all have faith, we have to have faith. Faith that God exists, that He watches over us, that He has a plan, that He is all-knowing and will reward us for our faithfulness.

            I could just imagine an ancient Greek from The Iliad reacting to a Christian discussion of faith. “Faith? What the hell is faith? Of course Zeus exists. He’s at Poker Night every Thursday. He owes me fifty bucks!”

            Faith just wasn’t something the Ancient Greeks concerned themselves with. Their religion was very much interactive, and The Iliad illustrates the belief that the gods could manifest and get their hands dirty with men, as opposed to staying distant on high and pulling the strings.

            Another difference, a huge one, about most beliefs in modern Abrahamic religions and those of the Ancient Greeks, is anthropomorphism.

            Dude, this post is probably like one giant vocabulary lesson.

            Anthropomorphic, in laymans terms, means ‘human’ or ‘to make human.’ A good example is Brian from Family Guy, the talking dog with very human qualities, relationships and interactions. The Ancient Greek gods, as opposed to the Abrahamic god, are very, very human. They’re not infallible by the furthest stretch of the imagination. Zeus is temperamental, proud, and, as previously mentioned, a total manwhore who cheats on his wife with mortal women. Hera is jealous and spiteful. Posiedon is one giant ball of pissy energy. Hades is gloomy and depressed. They frequently make mistakes, misjudge situations, and regret their actions. The Abrahamic god, obviously, isn’t anthropomorphic. He doesn’t make mistakes. In fact if you even suggest that He did make a mistake, you are in a world of shit with Jesus.

            With this in mind, I’ve always wondered why the whole Jesus dying for your sins thing is such a big deal with Christians. I’m going to come clean here; as you know, I’m agnostic, but I do study religions I find interesting, and I have to admit, I haven’t actually read the Jesus dying story in the Bible. It’s so boring.

            “…and the cops tried to shut them down one little block at a time. And it was so…bo-ring.”

            Dammit, Joker. Get out of my head.

            Anyway, we’re on Jesus, not the Joker. Here’s something I’ve always wondered: in the Bible, Jesus was the son of God/God himself (that’s always confused me, too.) He didn’t just have faith in heaven and miracles and stuff, he knew about heaven, he performed miracles. He was God, right? God/God’s son in mortal form. Well, if we bear that in mind…how big was his sacrifice, really? I mean, think about it. We’re afraid of death largely because we have no idea what’s going to happen when we die. We have theories, beliefs, “faith,” but in reality we have no freaking clue what happens in death, if anything. Jesus knew about heaven. He knew there was life after death, and that life was awesome. He knew that he’d just end up in heaven after he was crucified. With that actual knowledge, death isn’t really a big deal at all. So why was it so huge that he died for our sins when he was positive he’d end up in paradise? Plenty of people have died for others without being the son of God and having absolutely no knowledge of life after death, and we don’t wear their image around our necks. And honestly, I think their sacrifice was far greater, and far nobler. It’s like taking a seat from a loved one on a plane that you know is going to crash as opposed to one you know is going to the Virgin Islands. I think it would have been better in the Bible if Jesus had no idea that he was the son of God, that he just thought he was like everyone else, with the same doubts and the same lack of knowledge that we all have, and still chose to die. That seems so much more of a sacrifice then just, “Oh, I’m the son of God, dude, heaven is my hometown. Go ahead, Romans, crucify me. You’re just sending me somewhere awesome. In your face!”

            Well, that was a bit of a tangent, but…right, anthropomorphism.

            If you’re actually nerdy/awesome enough to have read and followed this particular post, you might now be going “But Dee, the religion of Ancient Greece is mythology now. Nobody follows it anymore. Abrahamic religions are two of the top three religions in the world. Nobody realistically follows interactive gods like the Olympians anymore.”

            First of all, I’m going to be a bitch and say that all religion is mythology, only time and historical circumstances separate the terms.

            …I love youuuu…please don’t burn me at the stake…

            Secondly, there are religions in full swing today that have deities whom their followers proclaim speak, touch, and otherwise interact with them directly. A perfect example of this, in which I am getting to be pretty well-versed, is Vodou.

            I started studying Vodou about a year ago when I found out that Demetrius, the semi-antagonist in my erotica project, follows a blend of Haitian and New Orleans Vodou ,but mostly Haitian. He doesn’t like how New Orleans Vodou emphasizes charms and producing gris gris simply for personal gain rather than actually working with the loa for said personal gain and honouring ancestors.

            …right, getting ahead of myself and off topic all at the same time…

            Haitian Vodou is a fascinating, beautiful, flexible, and extremely misunderstood religion. Voodoo dolls and zombies always spring to people’s minds, along with racist images of tribal witch doctors and things like that. You’d be surprised to know that Haitian Vodou has very smoothly blended in with Catholocism and that tons of Vodou practitioners are baptized Catholics who attend church on Sundays. Vodou altars are decorated with Saint images and seven-day candles.

            Aaaanyway, Haitian Vodou does have a single distant unreachable God, called Bondye (a Kreyol derivation of the French term Bon Dieu, if I’m not mistaken), who is too far beyond human understanding to interact with. But unlike the Abrahamic God, Bondye created man and the world and then said, “All right, cool, I’m done.” Rather than run the business of day-to-day life for humans as Christians and the like believe their God does, Bondye left those tasks to the Loa or the Lwa, immortal spirits who deal directly with their followers and their lives. There are tons of different Loa, most of whom are very human with strong individual personalities and personal preferences, right down to favourite foods.

            Followers of Vodou believe that they see and talk to the Loa regularly. Vodou ceremonies frequently include possession by them, and followers can speak with the Loa through the possessed person. The Loa are extremely hands on, even with things that most Christians wouldn’t bother their God with. Vodouisants can light a candle on their shrine to Ogou, hit his machete against a table to get his attention, and ask him for help in exchange for a good bottle of rum. Hell, the Loa even propose to people during gatherings, and followers can hold weddings and be married to them.

            As an agnostic, I’ve always found religion fascinating, both ancient and modern. And as someone who views religion from the outside looking in, I’ve always been particularly interested in the religions with hands-on deities. No offense to the faithful of the Abrahamic God, but if I were to choose a religion, I’d rather have one with a god or gods who understand what it is to be human, who have experienced the ups and downs of human emotion, rather than a god who is completely detached from it. It might be comforting to believe that an infallible, perfect creature in the clouds is watching over you, but honestly, I find it much easier to follow a deity I can see or talk to. Instead of praying for guidance in, say, finding a relationship, I’d probably rather just promise Urzulie Freda a bottle of good perfume if she helps me find someone I click well with. I’d rather burn an ox’s thigh for Zeus than consult a priest on how to effectively please a faceless God. I suppose I’m not built for a faith-based religion.

            For the record, I’ve obviously been speaking hypothetically throughout this blog. I’m pretty damn sure that the battlefield of the Trojan War wasn’t plagued by pissed off gods with personal agendas, nor do I know whether or not Loa possession is legitimate any more than I know the legitimacy of Catholic exorcisms. All that I’m saying is, if I were to select a religion for myself, I would select one where the line between the corporeal and the ethereal is thin.

            And that, my friends, is the nerdiest rant on this blog so far.

Absolutely lovely card-like depictions of various Loa by Ulafish on Deviantart.