Tag Archives: Christianity

The Bible Miniseries

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Were any of you able to watch the History Channel’s miniseries, The Bible, all of the way through?

I’ll be honest—I started to watch. I did not make it very far. I did not even make it to what people are calling the “ninja angels” in Sodom. I mostly just saw Noah telling the story of Genesis in a thick Scottish brogue while the ark comically rocks back and forth.

Yes, that’s really how it began.

I did not grow up in a household of an Abrahamic faith, so, aside from reading a passage from the Old Testament in my high school World Literature class (we were comparing Noah’s Ark and a couple of other snippets with The Epic Of Gilgamesh), I had no direct exposure to the Bible until college, when I bought a copy of the Bible for a class (Old Testament Literature, a very interesting class) and read through the Old Testament.

So I was able to get through reading it, but not very far in the miniseries. At some point, I may try again, but goodness it was a little odd.

The main things that I read and heard about from the series were the ninja angels (killing the people of Sodom), Noah’s Scottish brogue (which I had already seen), and Jesus, who was apparently “super hot.” (Thus, the picture at the top of this post)

I’m not much for beards, but yeah, he’s hot. And, for some reason, white? White with a tan is still white.

A lot of people have strong opinions about religion and its portrayal on television. I mean, you have shows like The CW’s Supernatural, which, if you take it too seriously, is all but guaranteed to offend you on religious grounds no matter what beliefs you have. I happen to like Supernatural, but I also know to not take it seriously. Then The History Channel has Ancient Aliens, which is offensive to anyone with a sense of reason, but which also essentially reduces all religious belief to a bunch of confused humans misinterpreting contact with extraterrestrials.

I would like to just dismiss Ancient Aliens by assuming that we live in a reasonable world and that no one takes it seriously. But we live in a world where people believe in vast Illuminati conspiracies and actually take Glenn Beck seriously. Sadly, people will take just about anything seriously.

Personally, I think that putting religious material on television makes sense. If you can write it down, you can put it on television, whether it’s from a holy book (pretty specific to the Abrahamic faiths) or from other religious writings, storytelling, and, especially, history.

The Bible miniseries got a lot of viewers. I have to wonder how many of those were just “the Sunday crowd.” By which I mean, how many people watched it purely because of what it was—because they felt some level of religious obligation to watch it? Kind of like how I really like a few members of the cast of the See-Fee (SyFy) Channel’s new series, Defiance, so I tried to watch it even though it can’t really hold my interest in the long run and some of the makeup is positively cringe-worthy.

(Seriously, I love a couple of those cast members to pieces, but I didn’t make it to the third episode of Defiance and I doubt that I’ll go back to it, even though I want more actual science fiction on television and I love the concept of a television series that is tied to an MMO)

When you make a religious broadcast (or statement), you are bound to offend someone. This miniseries on The Bible followed the Bible’s narratives of events, rather than what archeology and history suggest actually happened. That’s pretty much expected. I’m not offended by The History Channel telling that story. I don’t believe in it—it would be weird if I did, considering that I’m not Jewish or Christian or Muslim.

So, I’m glad that The History Channel did this. It’s certainly better than their Fake History shows like Ancient Aliens and their ridiculous reality shows (stuff about truckers and pawn shops, maybe?).

Speaking of History Channel programming, have you guys seen any of Vikings? I saw the beginning and I really enjoyed it. I haven’t caught up yet, but I love it. And not just because some of my ancestors were vikings. But, yes, also because of that.



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My State Almost Tried To Ignore The Constitution

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I live in North Carolina. That’s the United States east coast. My state has the Biltmore in the beautiful mountains to the west, Charlotte with major banking institutions in the southwest, well-known excellent hospitals and a major hub of technology businesses in Research Triangle Park, and our coastline in the east has beaches, a warm ocean, and the North Carolina sound is known for both Blackbeard’s activities and Roanoke Island (where an early colony vanished, leaving the word: “Croatoan” as the only clue regarding their disappearance). Large portions of The Hunger Games and Iron Man 3 were filmed here.

So, I like my state. Did we join with the bad guys* during the Civil War? Yes. Were we the home state of one of the worst US Senators in living memory, the late Jesse Helms? Unfortunately, yes. BUT for most of my life, we’ve had a Democratic governor. In 2008, North Carolina turned blue and voted to elect President Obama. We have a good education system and some wonderful universities (including Duke, of course—I did not go there for college, but I participated in some wonderful Duke programs in my early teens).

So, when I say that my state’s behavior on the governmental level since 2010 has been scary and out-of-character, I mean it. I cringe when my state is mentioned on The Daily Show because it used to be that we would get mentioned on the news because a hurricane had devastated our east coast or because of a record-setting outbreak of tornadoes in Raleigh in April 2011 that had meteorologists from all over the country in a tizzy.

Now, in 2010, as happened all over the country, a wave of scary, fringe-right Republicans (and I do mean fringe-right) came into office. In spring of 2012, there was a vote and Amendment One passed—strictly defining marriage between one man and one woman as the only legally recognized domestic union in the state. Politicians from both sides of the aisle argued fiercely against it, but it passed. For the record, the parts of the state with universities in them? They voted against Amendment One. As seen in the map below.

The counties in which I have lived and a county in which I intend to live? All voted against Amendment One. The state’s urban areas all fell under this category. But, like the rest of the world, North Carolina is getting better with time.

That said, we got a little scare as the speaker of our (currently terrifying) state house of representatives put forward but then buried (after a few days of embarrassing national media attention) a bill which would have attempted to render North Carolina exempt from the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Stupid, right? The Supremacy Clause in the Constitution is there for a reason. And the First Amendment is . . . I mean, really important. You can read more about that story here.

It kind of gets worse, though. Spurred by interest in the topic, a poll found that one-third of those Americans who participated (hopefully they oversampled some demographic, because that is just too high a fraction) would favor making Christianity the official religion in their home states. It also found that one-third would favor making Christianity the official religion of the United States.

One. Third. Of Americans.

Guys, that’s terrifying. I don’t even want my religion as the official faith of my state or country, much less someone else’s.

Honestly, I was more comfortable when it was just a few state representatives in my state acting up while they’re still in power. Embarrassing, sure, but just a bump in the road of progress.

One-Third of Americans want an official** state religion. If that’s true, I don’t even know what to do about that. It’s scary.

 

*Guys, Lincoln and the Union weren’t perfect, but let’s not ever pretend that the good guys/bad guys line is not obvious. I don’t like the states having the power to set different ages of consent or requirements for a driver’s license, and you can disagree with me if you like. But the Confederacy was fighting for the rights of the states to own human beings because of their race. Those are called the bad guys. And I say “we,” because it’s not like I’m from NC because my parents happened to move here. My maternal grandfather’s grandmother remembered the Civil War, including the parts about her family’s slaves. Which they owned in some numbers, apparently. That makes me all kinds of uncomfortable.

**Talk about official state religions is a great time to use the “Muslim Test.” When conservative Christian politicians try to draft legislation to let prayers be said over a loudspeaker at a public school sportsball game or something like that, just see how they would respond to their own idea if it were in the form of Muslim prayer. As an outsider, I don’t see much of a difference between the idea of living in an officially Christian nation or an officially Muslim nation, but the sorts of people who draft this kind of legislation tend to see a huge difference.



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A New Pope

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In case you’ve been blissfully isolated from all news* for the past few weeks, you know that the previous pope stepped down and that there is a new pope—Pope Francis.

The way that I titled this post is a nod to the title of the first Star Wars film. Tragically, I could not work a reasonable way to title it: “Star Wars: A New Pope,” so you’ll have to be satisfied with the second part alone.

Formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Pope Francis is being very vocally hailed as a “fresh face” and “new hope” for the Roman Catholic Church.

The fresh face of the Vatican.

At the risk of sounding immensely ageist, I have to say that, despite knowing some awesome old people, I have never really thought of celibate clergymen in their late seventies as “fresh faces” or sources of much of anything new.

Pope Francis made a bit of news for paying his own hotel bill and declining to sit on a throne while the cardinals lined up and declared their allegiance to him. Aside from an appearance of humility (though, really, how humble can one be while religious leaders from all around the world kneel and confirm that they answer you) and kind of setting aside the biggest perks of being the pope, Pope Francis’ atypical behavior has distracted from more important information about him.

Namely, his battle against marriage equality and same-sex adoption.

I do not care how many feet he washes (though that is super gross—I don’t even like touching my own feet, and they are quite clean), his opposition to fundamental rights of a portion of society is not acceptable. This is not okay, and it should not be overlooked.

The new pope was always going to be opposed to marriage equality and to female reproductive rights. That a pope was selected who was already known for having fought tooth and nail against his own country’s legal recognition of same-sex marriage and against their efforts to provide free contraception . . . well, that says something about the priorities of the conclave.

More worrisome is some of the language that Pope Francis, as a Cardinal, used to voice his opposition. In addition to the usual arguments about same-sex marriage “opposing God’s plan for humanity” and generally harming society (somehow) and how children need a mother and a father (for whatever reason), he also stated that Satan himself was the true source behind Argentina’s marriage equality campaign and perhaps all same-sex marriage.

Seriously. Read some interviews. Read his Wikipedia page (which is a bit more flattering than it was a couple of weeks ago). He does not seem to be a pope about whom we should become excited.

 

*By which I also mean social media, as even online news sources tend to be a little slow to report some stories—I mean, I learn about earthquakes in LA because Nickelodeon stars tweet about it, not because CNN tweets the same information two entire minutes later.



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‘Doomsday’ Is A Bit Of A Stretch

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photo of doomsday pictures
First of all, every time some yahoo says something about the impending “doomsday,” I think about the DC supervillain, Doomsday, and then I think about Superman: Doomsday, the animated film (arguably not for kids) which gets me to cry every time that I see it because after watching Superman get beaten to death by a horrible monster, you then see Lois Lane and Martha Kent crying and I just can’t handle it.

ANYWAY, you guys, the world is not ending this December 21st. And I think that few people would agree with me more than the ancient Mayans. Or contemporary Mayans, really.

It’s not a doomsday prophesy. It’s not really a prophesy (the word “prophecy” is generally misused, but that is an entirely different issue). It’s a calendar marking cyclical events. In the simplest terms, the Mayan “Long Count” calendar is a very lengthy unit of time as expressed in the charting of time. Just like a decade or a century or a millennium. In this case, it was based upon (and I won’t walk you through the math that adds up to it), a period of 5,125 years.

At the end of such a period, there is a transition—to the next set of years. That is all. You celebrate it like you celebrate the dawn of a new millennium. That was the Mayan view of things. It’s an arbitrary date to celebrate the passing of time. I am writing a book. I am reasonably pleased when I finish writing a chapter; I am much more excited when I finish a chapter whose number is a multiple of ten. Why? Mostly because our numbering system is a base-ten system, and so we tend to identify milestones by multiples of ten.

Like any significant date on the calendar, you will always have crazy people who believe that doomsday is here. Not only is this not what the Mayans believed (or believe) about this upcoming Winter Solstice (that’s the 21st, you guys). It is just not a Mayan kind of belief. It is, though not uniquely so, a Judeo-Christian concept. One of the beliefs of early Judaism which set it apart from the beliefs of other northwestern Semitic peoples was that there would be a divinely ordained End Of The World in which the dead would be bodily resurrected—which was why burial in which bodies were intact until burial was important. Christianity has, from the very beginning, held a belief in the very imminent end of the world, one that has evolved with time (and, interestingly, a coded message to fellow Christians became the Book of Revelation which …

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