Humanity and Symbolism

Responding to my last post, Greg Laden objected to this comment of mine:

If cooler heads were to prevail, this ought to be the take-away lesson: To view a deeply cherished religious symbol as no more than baked bread, a book as no more than ink and paper, indeed a human being as no more than chemicals and electricity, this is not a mark of sophistication. It is, rather, proof of a sadly impoverished worldview.

He objected that:

There is nothing that links the part about a cracker and a book to the human in anything PZ has said or done, and it conflicts starkly with what he has said and done in the past. This is not even quote mining, it is attributing a very improper thought to a person who has never had that thought and never would. Up to that paragraph, I thought your comments were quite reasonable for a christian, and fair. But giving PZ Myers the attribute of believing the importance of people to be in the same category as crackers [is] utterly absurd.

I want to make this clear, because I can see how my clipped phrasing could be misunderstood: My point was not that Myers considers human beings to be of no greater worth than a cracker—far from it. The whole point of his post, which I agreed with, was that compared to a human life, "a cracker" is a small thing. But he went much further than that, saying not only that the Eucharist ought to be less important, but that it ought not to matter at all, on the grounds that “Nothing must be held sacred.”

My point was that this justification for his claim that "it's just a cracker" is based on an extreme and ridiculous form of reductionism that implies that the only thing that matters about an object is its physical composition. Since the wafer doesn't really turn into Jesus' body, Myers claims that no one has a right to be upset if he destroys it. My point was that, if you accept that premise it leads to absurd results, one of them being that a human is "no more than chemicals and electricity."

I would fully expect Myers (and any sane person) to reject that conclusion, but he cannot do so without rejecting the premise. For part of what it means to recognize that a human being is far more than the sum of their parts is to recognize that we—as individuals and communities—create meaning and hold certain things as valuable and sacred. The Eucharist is not just a cracker, because it is held dear by a community of people, just as a flag is not just a piece of cloth and a wedding ring is not just a piece of metal. In making the absurd claim that “it’s just a cracker,” Myers in fact rejects a key aspect of the humanity of over a billion people who do (rationally or irrationally) place great value on the Eucharist.

He is, of course, entitled to believe and argue that Catholics are mistaken in their devotion to the Eucharist, but he cannot reasonably claim that "it's just a cracker," nor can he find it surprising that those who hold it dear might be upset by his willful desecration of their cherished symbol.

PZ Myers Follows Through on His Threat to Desecrate the Eucharist

Well, he did it:

I wasn't going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus's tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt....

By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred.

As I said at the beginning, I agree with his insistence that disrespect for a communion wafer ought to be a much smaller matter than disrespect for a person, but his little stunt in fact disrespects both. Still, I can hardly blame him. Though plenty of valid objections have been raised against this kind of iconoclasm, they have been almost completely overwhelmed by the flood of semi-literate hate-mail he has received. In the face of such seemingly irrational hatred, it cannot surprise that he felt that drastic measures were needed.

In truth, his actual desecration was surprisingly understated, but that will not stop Bill Donohue and the Catholic League from doing everything in their power to make his life miserable. In the end, as a Protestant who does not believe in transubstantiation, all I can say is that PZ Myers has not in fact done any harm to Jesus, but those who have responded with hatred and death threats have certainly done so. They have proven his point for him, by making Christianity appear to be little more than irrational superstition, and seriously damaged the reputation of Christ in the world.

But to me the most interesting aspect of this incident arises from the fact that he also chose to destroy copies of the Koran and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. On the one hand, adding a second form of blasphemy does nothing to diminish the disrespect of the first, but it does at least clarify his point: that to PZ Myers, "Nothing must be held sacred."

If cooler heads were to prevail, this ought to be the take-away lesson: To view a deeply cherished religious symbol as no more than baked bread, a book as no more than ink and paper, indeed a human being as no more than chemicals and electricity, this is not a mark of sophistication. It is, rather, proof of a sadly impoverished worldview. It is rational to condemn the atrocities committed in the name of a flag; it is mere childishness to desecrate and discard such a flag as "just" a piece of cloth. With this stunt, Myers has proven precisely nothing about the meaning of the symbol, he has only proven his own distaste for the sacred.

But I’m afraid that point will be missed in the rush to condemn his blasphemy, as many of those who should recognize the sacred value, not just of a Eucharistic wafer, but of a human being—made in the image of God—will instead treat him with "profound disrespect." And that is the real tragedy in this situation.

Greydanus on Hellboy, Christianity and Supernatural Fiction

Steven Greydanus has an excellent article up at Christianity Today on the way the supernatural is presented in films like Hellboy II, particularly how demons tend to get more play than angels or God, and how Christian symbols and objects (like the Cross, a Rosary, Holy Water, etc.) become weapons to defeat evil:

Why is there so much hell and so little heaven in these movies? Partly, perhaps, it's because filmmakers simply don't know what to do with God—not just theologically, but for the sheer dramatic difficulty posed by omnipotence. It's the Superman dilemma times infinity: Against that much power, how do you make the enemy a credible threat? Even Gandalf's power was ultimately too intimidating for Peter Jackson and company; once it became clear the wizard could drive off the flying Nazgul, the filmmakers feared the enemy might seem too diminished. (This was the rationale for the problematic scene in which the Witch-King shatters Gandalf's staff.)

Another reason for the neglect of heaven is simply that heaven is harder to do. C. S. Lewis noted this point in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, in which he regretted being unable to offset Screwtape's diabolical perspective with a parallel heavenly correspondence presenting "arch-angelical advice to the patient's guardian angel." While the task of twisting his mind into a hellish perspective was for Lewis oppressive but not difficult, assuming an angelic voice seemed to him all but unachievable.

While Lewis did later achieve some success in dramatically depicting the outskirts of heaven in The Great Divorce, the general disparity of depicting heaven and hell in art and drama has been felt by many. It's not hard to see why. Beauty is more elusive an effect than grotesquerie; misery and wretchedness are far easier to inflict, and therefore to imagine and express, than joy and beatitude are to bestow or evoke. Even biblical or cultural images of hell (unquenchable flames, demons with pitchforks) are more immediately persuasive than biblical or cultural images of heaven (thrones and crowns, halos and harps). Every sinful impulse in us is hell in miniature, while our best impulses fall infinitely short of the glory of heaven. In a word, God's absence is easier to imagine than the fullness of his presence.

Like the familiar narrative dilemma of the colorful villain who makes the hero look pale by comparison—think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Clarisse Starling and Hannibal Lecter—the remoteness of heaven versus the imminence of hell seems a not unnatural creative side effect of our limited perspective as finite and fallen creatures.

The whole thing is worth a read.