I have been a horror fan since I was a little kid – I started with the Goosebumps books when I was six and worked my way up to Christopher Pike in my early adolescence before finally making it to Stephen King in high school (I would have started King earlier, but my parents wouldn’t let me, and I sneaked them into my backpack from the school library). I enjoyed some horror movies, but I really got into them in college after I was old enough to purchase R-rated movies and watch them without worrying about my parents (who don’t like most R-rated movies, simply not their taste). These days, I’ve dipped my toe into the not-as-gory-as-you’d-think torture porn genre and found the temperature to be better than expected.

When I was younger, I was sometimes concerned about whether certain kinds of books and movies, especially the darker stuff, was okay to read. It certainly wasn’t my worst guilt when I was still a Christian, but it could weigh on me. In college, I finally came up with a policy: if the genre had a correlation in the Bible, why not? As many atheists have pointed out, there is some R-rated material (perhaps even NC-17 when you take away the prudish language substitutes) in the Bible, but even beyond the more hardcore and extreme genres, there are less objectionable genres.

Romance: Ruth, Esther, Song of Solomon, parts of Genesis. Ruth in particular pulls no punches. It’s undeniably romantic, but there’s the part where Naomi tells Ruth to have sex with Boaz (come on, did you really think uncovering a foot was a special code for anything but taking off Boaz’s pants?). And she does! Undress him, I mean. They kind of fade out and it’s up in the air whether they actually have sex before marriage, especially considering the prudishness of the authors and/or translators.

Romantic Comedy: Standard overprotective, vilified father in Laban when Jacob is working to marry Rachel and gets the “unattractive” daughter first, forced to work more before he can have Rachel.

Western: David and Goliath, David and Saul. Sure, it’s a different culture, but the elements are still there, especially with David and Goliath. Classic shoot-out with the underdog being the best stone-slinger in the Middle East. And King Saul is one of those landowners who lets self-importance and greed get in the way.

Action: Jacob wrestling with an angel. Exodus. Joshua. Gideon. Samson. All the wars, wars, wars. While the Bible books are not exactly known for their excellent action descriptions, there are some pretty cool stories, if your imagination is strong enough to imagine more than just what is told.

Musical: Psalms. And there are songs interspersed throughout various books and letters. Music is a good way to pass down history and stories over time. Mary sings in Elizabeth ’s house after being told she is going to have a son by the Holy Spirit.

Fantasy/Sci-fi: Ezekiel is a sci-fi favorite with the “wheel in the middle of a wheel” being interpreted as a UFO. And any miracle can be interpreted as fantasy: Daniel in the lion’s den, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace, the Gospels and the Acts (some action in there, too), Exodus.

Apocalyptic/Disaster/Dystopia: Duh. If I have to explain this, you need to go back to Bible 101. Parts of Genesis and Exodus have things like the tower of Babel , the Flood, the destruction of Sodom , the plagues, the parting and closing of the Red Sea . Judges is great for dystopia (and thriller and horror – there’s stuff in there to make your blood curdle, like New York City noir with a police strike), as are parts of Genesis, and when Israel was falling due to bad kings in Old Testament, eventually under Babylonian rule.

Psychological Thriller/Mystery: If you take the Apocrypha into account, I think Judith might count. But I also think that the story of the Fall may be a simplistic thriller. I could see it happening. And of course, God in general works in mysterious ways, and all the people trying to figure him out could qualify as mystery and thriller.

Horror: Stephen King called Job the one of the earliest horror stories. And Revelation is as much a horror story as a disaster story. Then there are the plagues in Exodus, the demon possessions and exorcisms in the Gospels, the temptation of Jesus … anything with Satan and demons, really.

Erotica: Song of Solomon is classic, and if you include the dub con/non con/incest rampant in the story parts of the Bible and David’s lust for Bathsheba, you’ve got the lighter and darker sides of sex. And I am surely not the only one to wonder about Mary and the Holy Spirit. Being touched by God or his angels are classically depicted as ecstatic. See Torture Porn for BDSM elements.

Torture Porn: The crucifixion of Christ (we walk around with the object of torture on our necks, people … probably because it’s hard to wear an empty cave), Revelation, the condemnation of Jezebel, Elisha calling down bears on mocking youth. Mentions of hell, which has inspired some of the most imaginative tortures in both Christian fiction and reality. Not to mention that hell is God-created and Satan-maintained. If God isn’t a proponent of torture porn, I don’t know who is. (After all, he just sat back and let Satan torment Job. Sanctioned sadism and masochism on God’s part is rampant in the Bible.)

This is stuff that I came up with when I was still a Christian. It is only slightly irreverent now because of my newer issues with the Bible, but if you take the tongue from the cheek, you might see that I have a point. The Bible has everything, stories told for the juiciness as well as the moral (fairy tales, anyone?), and thinking that everything about it is goodness and light is naive at best, deliberately ignorant at worst. God isn’t tame, and there is violent anger and condemnation as much as there is mercy and forgiveness. Not to mention that real life in “a fallen world” lends itself to acknowledging the darkness within us, not dismissing it. Whenever it is dismissed in fiction, you’ll find that the result is shallow, saccharine, insincere.

So choose your genres according to taste, use discernment if you must, but don’t assume that everyone needs to follow your tastes. Different people can take different things – just because you’re more vulnerable to being pulled down by certain kinds of fiction doesn’t mean other people are. Take responsibility for yourself; don’t assume responsibility for others (unless you have kids and have control over them until they are adults … then let them walk into walls and find their way, okay?).

Because this list is nowhere near comprehensive, what am I missing? Have your own to share?

At one time there was a young woman who worked to glorify the Lord without calling attention to herself. Although she was also aware of the blessings and privileges in her life, she never knew exactly what to do with all these things to make up for other people not having these things, so she just went on doing what she was supposed to be doing, hoping that things would get resolved in time, according to God’s divine will.

Then the young woman experienced a fracture in her soul. After the divide, the new part of her grew disillusioned by her faith until it was gone completely, leaving not a God-shaped hole in her heart but a certainty-shaped hole. The new part of her was decidedly rational, but incomplete, young, unsure, and weak in comparison to the original, and according to the Scriptures, she was as valued as a disease or parasite. This part of her developed silently within her head, occasionally finding a voice through her hands rather than her mouth, so afraid she was of being wrong or being yelled at or being rejected.

As time passed, these two parts of her became more and more unstable and unsettled by the existence of the other. Each time one gained ground, the other one struck back with even more fervor. The woman, pulled in two directions, ended up going nowhere, but continued as she always had, at least in action if not completely in spirit, because there could be no progression. After a time, the woman grew tired, and the stronger of the two parts of her started winning the battles, although the weaker part of her never did disappear. Instead, it was crammed into a too-small cupboard, understanding how unwanted and unvalued it was, not necessarily how incorrect it was.

After a time, the woman died, as all humans must. One part of her went to heaven, and one part of her went to hell. The one in heaven rejoiced and turned away from the mirror image in hell, and the one in hell continued as she always had, in spirit as much as in action. She pleaded with her mirror image to have mercy on her because she had tried so hard to reconcile with her and had simply been unable to. She begged to be reconciled now because she was as much a part of her mirror image as the mirror image was of her.

She called to her mirror image, “In life you had good things: you had love, acceptance, certainty, but I was looking for answers and finding none and suffering for it, while you believed because you could not imagine not believing and losing everything. Why is it you, then, who continues to receive the blessings?”

The mirror image responded, “You will be in death as you were in life, for your portion of the soul withered and you were blinded by your need for everything to have concrete answers. If you think I fought against you for years to get here just to return to you down there, you are gravely mistaken. I will have no part of it, for I cannot remain here if you are with me.”

“I only wanted answers. Why were answers never given?”

“Because getting answers is not important. Belief rather than knowing is what got me here.”

“You were blind,” the one in hell shouted up at the one in heaven. “You were desperate. You were passive.”

“And you were wrong.”

The divide was complete, and the separate parts of one woman went their separate ways. The one in heaven became perfected and consistently whole, and the one in hell remained fractured, tattered, tired, and tortured. To her, the landscape of hell was no different than the landscape of earth, except now she had certainty and found it did not help.

I am deeply conflicted right now, suffice it to say. This parable is not actually an admission that I am wrong. It is an admission that I fear I am wrong, and that this fear has damaged me (perhaps irreparably). I use the phrase “fracture in my soul” metaphorically rather than literally, inspired by Mary Reilly. The parable is based loosely on Luke 16:19-31, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

I have at least one thing that I want to write this week, but for now, enjoy this post by Alyx Bradford. I recently wrote my arguments against the “War on Christmas” from a contemporary perspective. Alyx argues against the “War on Christmas” from a historical perspective. She gives her permission early in the post that it’s okay to share, so part of it is here, and you can read the rest at her journal.

I feel the need to say something publicly, because this is just starting to drive me crazy. And maybe if I put it out here, people will repost the information, and it will reach some of the nimrods who need to hear it. (Not that I fool myself they’d listen. But at least they’d be well-informed nimrods instead of ignorant nimrods).

If I hear the phrase “War on Christmas” one more time, I think I’m going to scream. I am so bloody flipping sick of hearing right-wing nutjobs whinge about people trying to “take the Christ out of Christmas”. Because I’ve got news for them. Jesus? Was not the reason for the season until about 60 years ago.

Let’s ignore, for argument’s sake, the fact that Jesus was probably born in the spring, when Roman taxes were collected, and when early church historians said the nativity was. Let’s pretend the holiday is placed where it ought to be. I’ll give you that one, out of charity.

Christmas was not even a feast day for the first few hundred years of the religion. Natality wasn’t even something you were supposed to celebrate at all. In 245, the theologian Origen of Alexandria stated that, “only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod)” celebrated their birthdays. In 303, Christian writer Arnobius ridiculed the idea of celebrating the birthdays of gods. Not until sometime in the mid-to-late 4th century did the birth of Jesus warrant celebration, and then, it was celebrated during Epiphany, which actually celebrated the visit of the Magi. And this was mostly in the Eastern church. It was fully the 9th century before Christmas actually became a big deal, and then it was more because Kings and Emperors started deciding it was a good day to hold coronations.

From the Middle Ages on, Christmas was a party holiday. It’s no coincidence that it was held at the same time as the old Roman Saturnalia. This was a time to consume all the perishable goods that wouldn’t make it through the winter. If you’d needed to slaughter cattle at the end of autumn, best to hold a nice big feast so everyone could fatten up on them. Special Christmas ales were brewed. Teutonic and Scandinavian traditions like caroling, lighting candles, and decorating with holly and ivy somehow crept into the celebrations. From about 900 on, the terms Christmas and Yule became used interchangeably – and we still do, never minding that Yule is entirely pagan in origin.

Christmas spent the best part of 800 years as a holiday of misrule. It was the time of year to subvert natural order. Servants were crowned and lords played fools. You were allowed to kiss and cavort and roll in the hay. Drunkenness, promiscuity, and gambling weren’t just permitted, they were encouraged. You went wassailing — what we would call caroling — where the objective was to get someone to give you ale and bread in exchange for your song. If you got ale at every house, I imagine this tradition looking something like a medieval pub crawl. It was the time of year to blow off steam, to hit the release valve you so desperately needed. You threw a giant Yule log on the fire — another borrowed tradition — and skived off from work for as long as it burnt. It being the middle of winter, you probably didn’t have all that much else to do, anyway, with harvest over and spring planting not yet begun. Might as well enjoy yourself. A time to gather around the fire and tell stories and sing songs.

Note that, thus far, Jesus has had pretty much nothing to do with it. Christmas wasn’t a day to go to church and listen to a mass. It was, actually, pretty much what we celebrate today — a time to get together with your friends and family, eat a lot of food, drink a lot of wine, and have a lot of laughs.

Read more…

Over the last few weeks, I have written a lot. I’ve written half a novel, I’ve written a few essays about my mental state, and I’ve written a few articles – none of these are fit for this blog.

So talk to me: what do you want me to write about? I don’t have much on my mind that I can share here right now, but I would like to share something

Most of the time, I have to struggle with two independent and opposing thought processes. There’s Conservative Christian and Liberal Atheist, who vehemently disagree on just about everything. But the one thing that they agree on is that the “War on Christmas” is stupid. Naturally the liberal and atheist parts of me would think so – after all, it’s furthering the secularization of the nation, right? But the conservative Christian parts of me agree completely, and that’s something worth noting.

Believe it or not, the separation between church and state was designed to protect religion. And the attempts to maintain that separation, while sometimes ham-handed, are in the church’s best interests. The best rule of thumb for any conservative Christian opening his yap to decry the War on Christmas is whether they would be okay with any other religion doing the same thing. For instance, the same people who are furious that cashiers no longer say “Merry Christmas!” get just as furious if a snarky cashier says “Happy Hanukkah!” or “Have a good Winter Solstice!” When a Muslim prayer is said in the White House, conservative Christians get angry, then they get angry when their traditional Christian prayers are removed.

America’s history is mostly a Christian one, I’ll give you that. But one borne partly of religious persecution within the Christian ranks (one philosophy against another within the Christian religion). Many ordinary people came here in order to practice their version of Christianity in peace. However, although America ’s history is predominantly Christian, which makes it a part of American culture, the more belief systems we brought in, the less exclusively Christian we became. The US was Christian culturally, but while talk of God and even Jesus was common even in state discussions, Christianity was never the official religion anymore than English was the official language. The separation of church and state existed in order to let religion develop freely, without interference from the state. And it existed in order to let the state develop freely, without interference from religion that would, in turn, cause the state to interfere with religion.

The so-called War on Christmas is, therefore, in within the best interests both of the state and Christianity.

I ask you, soldiers for Christmas, why you want your nativity scenes in government buildings. Most of your government officials are already Christian, but the government is still a lean, lying, hypocritical, bureaucratical institution. I understand that you probably want your Christian heritage endorsed by government, but is that really a ringing endorsement? Do you really want your religion represented by politics?

I ask you, soldiers for Christmas, why you want your religious Christmas carols in your schools when you don’t want Hanukkah and cultural Kwanzaa acknowledged, calling it politically correct (and Winter Solstice is out of the question, devil’s neopagan children). Do you really want your schools responsible for teaching Christian values? I thought that was the purview of the home and of Sunday school. I present my church/state rule of thumb again: if another religion wanted to do something like this during their holy time, especially outside of the December, would that be okay to you? For instance, what if the school lunch system shut down during Ramadan, to make fasting during the day less of a temptation to Muslim students and in deference to the holiday? Would you support the schools in celebrating melting pot American culture then?

I ask you, soldiers for Christmas, why you exclusively want “Merry Christmas!” in stores. Dude, that is the last place I would think that you want your religious Christmas. So many conservative Christians decry the secularization of Christmas, yet insist on placing ridiculous importance on religious Christmas in the places of society that encourage – nay, demand – overconsumption, selfishness, greed, stress, parking lot rage, debt, and waste. I would want my Christmas out of that institution post haste. Let them keep their secular Christmas.

Frankly, even when I was conservative Christian, I grew to like the phrases “Happy Holidays” and “Winter Break” or “Winter Holidays.” They seemed to encompass the season so much more effectively. From a liturgical standpoint, most of the time that we say “Merry Christmas” isn’t Christmas at all. It’s Advent. The liturgical Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and goes on for another eleven days. Saying “Happy Holidays” covers Advent, the general season, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, the twelve days of Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day. From a culturally inclusive standpoint, it always opens up the holiday spirit to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Winter Solstice, as well as secular Christmas. Many minority religions and cultures can feel excluded from the holiday spirit when they aren’t acknowledged, like a party going on public building that they weren’t (and should have been) invited to.

The secularization of Christmas in state institutions is something to which Christianity is unaccustomed. They aren’t used to being nudged out of places that they probably shouldn’t have been in the first place. I say that because the secularization of many Christian holidays, the same secularization that conservative Christians hate, is a product of that lack of separation between church and state.

In the process of secularizing our government, schools, and stores, there will be missteps: for instance, it took a copyright law for a school to start saying just the word Christmas in secular Christmas songs like “White Christmas.” I would be the first to argue that there are two Christmases, the secular and religious, and that the secular form is open to more than just Christians, so there should be no problem singing secular Christmas songs, just as there’s no problem singing the dreidel song or something that represents Kwanzaa. I would also argue that it doesn’t hurt anyone to include a few religious favorites, as long as it represents the full range of religious importance during the general winter holidays (include religious Hanukkah songs and maybe something echoing neopaganism if you’re going to include “O Little Town of Bethlehem”). I also don’t think that secular Christmas traditions like trees, garlands, ornaments, candy canes, and similar staples should be abandoned outright.

It may take some pushing of boundaries (i.e. when atheists put an easel explaining their policy on Christmas next to a nativity scene in a government building, followed by other religions putting their winter holiday symbols there, too – it continued until religious displays were banned) from both ends, but I think that after this “War on Christmas” is over, we will end up where we should have been in the first place: religion and state separated so that each is protected from the other.

Second rule of thumb: If you don’t want the state in your religion, keep your religion out of the state. We all see how poorly that marriage failed in the Republican party. The secularization of the winter holidays is not to take something away from Christians – they aren’t trying to get into your churches or your charities or your minds (they ruled in favor of free expression on candy canes). You can still have your Christmas Eve services. The judges who rule in favor of secularization will probably be going to one or two of those services themselves.

The truth is, even with its faults, there are some good aspects of secular Christmas and the acceptance of more than one winter holiday. The childlike spirit of the Santa story, the excitement on Christmas morning, bringing the family together (be they biological or not), the wonderful food, the eggnog, the lights and decorations, the willingness to enjoy childlike wonder, the celebration of snow and winter weather, being taught about many different ways of having a celebration during bleak weather, the collective enjoyment of the holiday regardless of religion.

Even as an atheist – and one violently wary of Christianity these days – I enjoy both a secular and religious Christmas. There’s something about the carols and the friends and family and the Candlelight Service and the story of both Jesus and Santa that still gets to me. I eagerly wait for the day after Thanksgiving to come so that I can have my radio on the Christmas station and so I can listen to my Christmas playlist on my iPod. I love decorating the tree. I love the Advent season: hope, peace, joy and love are universal aspirations. I love buying or making presents and food for others as much as I like receiving presents and eating the food. It’s all interconnected with me, interconnected in a way that is still good, that is still mostly guilt-free (although how guilt-free remains to be seen, since that’s getting worse all the time).

There is no “War on Christmas.” There is an opening of minds and hearts. There is a removal of religious Christmas where it doesn’t belong in the first place, and an embracing of a more far-reaching cultural tradition. You still have your Christmas in your homes, hearts, and churches. Give the rest of us a little space, too, and don’t fill your holiday season with your vitriol. That kind of attitude hurts you more than it hurts us.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!
For those who don’t celebrate it, Happy Holidays!
I take it either way.

I don’t yet want to talk about my own issues, but since learning that I have deeper problems than depression on its own, I have had to reapproach my perspective regarding insanity.

You have probably watched the ripped-from-the-headlines crime shows and read the newspaper articles about new science being used in criminal cases wherein the defendant pleads insanity. And neurological science does support the idea that alterations in the brain’s functionality from the established “norm” inform behavior (and one might say, vice versa, wherein pervasive patterns are created). I have sometimes felt frustrated with the insistence on the brain as an immovable force that cause unchangeable behavior: the “they couldn’t help it” defense.

What I am gradually realizing is that, with the development of neuroscience, we are discovering that while the “they couldn’t help it” plea doesn’t work so much, the “they are wired this way” plea has scientific support. People combat their wiring every day, and for some people, the behavioral patterns are more pervasive than others. The neuroscience only shows how those brain and behavioral patterns are linked, either in ways that are considered socially normal or socially abnormal. Angry, violent, and impulsive people show excessive arousal in the amygdala and less frontal lobe activity; bigots show certain brain patterns when shown the source of their bigotry; depressed people show less frontal lobe activity and have trouble responding to seratonin. There is a definite chemical and neurological aspect to these personality traits, both the ones you’re born with and the ones that are taught to you, adaptive or maladaptive. They’re like paths in the forest that you walk over and over again, and some people go off the usual paths and form their own, which are often less clear and more dangerous.

For many people, including me for a while, the use of the insanity plea has often been seen as a cop out defense. Basically, from a lay person’s perspective, if you’re not extremely psychotic a person has no excuse for using the insanity plea. A way of completely removing all culpability from the defendant and lessening punitive action by putting them in a mental institution rather than a prison.

However, while I agree that the use of the insanity plea is still new and unwieldy, I predict an eventual shift in the concept of the justice system’s response to criminal activity. Or let’s just say that I hope it happens.

We have been saying for decades that the prison system is a failure, that the prison environment does not succeed in changing the criminal behavior, only reinforces it. Then, when they are let out, they are continually treated as criminals rather than as former criminals who have paid their due – society’s little self-fulfilling prophecies. We have been saying for decades that we should focus a little less on punishment and more on rehabilitation. As long as the prison system remains as it is, rehabilitation is near impossible, except in isolated cases.

With the turn of criminal defense toward psychology, this may be the impetus we need to focus more on rehabilitating the maladaptive behavior or medicating the chemical imbalance, whether mild or extreme. There is still tremendous stigma against mental illness, but there’s a prevailing social attitude that mental illness can be fixed while criminal behavior is dangerous.

Allow me to use my imagination for a few minutes, presenting the vision of a justice system centered on rehabilitation. This would not be an easy ride or a lack of punishment for those convicted of crimes – the scheduling of the days and the controlling of actions are similar to those in prisons, and you’re medicated to boot. You get punished for certain behavior, but (and this is the big but) you get rewarded and validated for more socially acceptable behavior. In an institution centered around nurturing adaptive behavior rather than punishing maladaptive behavior, I imagine that the prison culture toward which we have grown so callously indifferent would lessen considerably.

I am not so naive as to believe everything would be sunshine and rainbows if criminals were treated as insane instead of evil. Many of the downfalls in the prison system are part of state mental health institutions as well: psychologists and psychologists who are manipulative, power hungry, and arrogant; lazy therapy; naive therapy that does not take into account a person’s ability to manipulate or fake normalcy; overmedication; not enough staff for each patient so that not enough attention is given. If the mental health institutions end up taking over the prison system’s job, it is going to need a tremendous overhaul, both state and private institutions. Each inmate patient would need complete attention at least once a week, probably more, plus supervised group therapy and social interaction. Close watch would need to be kept on the problem children and the more violent, sociopathic inmates (with attention paid to manipulative patients or those who may try and fool therapists into believing the therapy has succeeded).

And one of the most important things to require is that the defendant who pleads insanity must be willing to rehabilitate over the course of years to decades to death (almost as much as a prison sentence anyway) until considered fit to be released, as with any patient. If that willingness is not there, the prison system will continue to act in its original capacity.

I do not think that mainstreaming those who enter into the system through criminal activity with those who are in the system strictly due to their mental state is a good idea. Separating those institutions may be necessary, with a transition from one institution to another possible if therapy takes.

So when I consider the shift of criminal defense toward acknowledging pervasive behavior or chemical imbalance or odd brain activity as a contribution to criminal actions, I am warily hopeful that the way the justic system eventually responds to this plea is not to consider it avoidance of punishment, but an acknowledgment of problems and a willingness to change (whatever it takes). This potential transition from punitive to rehabilitative services for criminal activities can ultimately allow for the possibility that criminals can become productive members of society again.

This is just a reminder that the reason why this blog is so quiet lately is because I’m trying to write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. Instead of two or three posts a week, I’m making the effort to write one.

www.nanowrimo.org

[ETA: Incidentally, I've written more than one blog post these last two weeks, but none of them seemed appropriate to post. Hence the lack of one this week. There is definitely a post lined up for the day after Thanksgiving, and I'll try and come up with something else.]

Let me begin this post right out by saying that I am arguing semantics. For many people, this means that I’m arguing about nothing. But I’m a word person, and I recognize that meaning in even two little words can be important. Many people use words and phrases in their day without really thinking about what they mean and why they shouldn’t mean what they’re said to mean. So when I start to quibble about the way we throw around a phrase full of empty meaning like “human rights,” it’s not because I don’t want the same things that people who fight for human rights want. It only means that I don’t agree with the words they use to get there.

This post will be closely aligned with my issue of people’s overuse of the word “deserving”. It’s taken me a while to parse out the way to explain why the phrase “human rights” is problematic for me, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. It may help me develop my argument further.

Let’s begin with the fight for gay marriage. You all know that I am a proponent of legalizing gay marriage. Yet I confess that I am baffled at people who call marriage a human right (which is not a human right except between a man and a woman in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, unless something changed recently). Just as I am baffled at people who call health care a human right. Marriage is a human institution created in the interests of purity and property. Health care is an institution to financially support those who want preventative or active care for their health. And I wouldn’t call that a right. I think they are things that lead to happiness and longevity in many, but no one deserves it [ETA In the original version of this, the sentence ended with "or requires it to live." This section started out just with marriage rather than marriage and health care, and didn't get changed. How long we're supposed to live is a complicated question I don't want to address here.] – those without marriage recognize it as a luxury, and so do those who cannot afford health care. I might call it a legal right for a segment of our global population. But a human right?

What are human rights? Who decided them? Why are they things that everyone should have when there is no way everyone can have them, even things that are necessities? Why are some human rights more luxury or privilege or desire than necessity? The implication of the word “rights” is that they are imparted on us by someone or something. “Human rights,” unlike “legal rights,” are too large a concept to be given by a nation, so I cannot help but associate “human rights” with moral absolutes or divine right, those given to us by a deity (which I don’t believe in, in case you didn’t notice). What’s more, the notion of “human rights” implies that they were imprinted upon us, which does not account for change in societies, needs, expectations, philosophies. I emphatically and respectfully agree with Mr. Jefferson: we do not have unalienable rights given to us by a creator.

“Human rights” suggest that they are rights that we have had, presently have, and will continue to have as humans. However, human rights as we understand them today are simply ideals, arbitrary, decided upon by a moral philosophy of the last century as though that’s the way it’s always been and will be. Philosophers and theologians have been arguing human rights for centuries. And they have always been dependent on the society in which they are determined and the individual philosophies of those determining them.

Do you think freedom was considered a universal human right when slavery was a common institution? Do you think the fact that we consider it a right they always had but was denied to them legally made a difference to their situation? You think the fact that I have the human right to marry a woman (because human rights cannot be given or taken, they just are) makes any difference on whether I can marry a woman or not? Human rights just seem to be legal rights applied retroactively, which is on the empty side of things.

Do humans have the right to shelter? What determines a shelter? Is a bus depot a shelter? What about at a time when human beings did not even have the concept of “home?” Do humans have the right to marriage? What kind of marriage? Who determines the definition? What about the humans back when marriage was not even a twinkle in a dominant personality’s eye? We say today that human rights just are. But imagine how the ideal will change in a century or two. What human rights do you think we “missed” in the last century?

I stipulate that arguing from “human rights” is unnecessary and empty. Why argue from “human rights,” which pretends to stay the same but actually continues to change? Instead, continue pushing the ideals without the implications of the phrase – allow for the change without pinning yourself to some divine imprint, especially if you’re an atheist. Argue for what makes society a better place for groups and individuals. Look back in history and see the changes to the legal rights given to certain subsets of people. Make comparisons, and show how those legal rights (which are concrete concepts amenable to alteration) improve society. Instead of saying that these things are human rights, which is a feel-good cop-out, explain why they should be legal rights.

Arguing human rights, in my opinion, is philosophical masturbation and ultimately empty. It clouds issues by placing the undue gravity of moral absolutism and determinism. You can still have ideals and dreams of future legal rights without calling them human rights. I place much more importance on legal rights, which are “human rights” made into social rules and mores. You can point to a law and say, “See, I have that legal right.” Or you can make an effort to change the law and say, “See, I should have that legal right because of this, this, this, and this.”

In no particular order:

1) “The Gift,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Five: I knew there were two more seasons of BtVS, so the whole Buffy dying thing was not supposed to be a surprise. It was not supposed to be so affecting. Sarah Michelle Gellar has a singular talent at crying, and she can usually make me tear up every time she does, but this was different. At the end of the “The Gift,” I mourned for Buffy, not with her. And watching Giles see his Slayer dead, seeing Willow crying, seeing Spike fall absolutely apart… just thinking about it makes me misty. And of course, there’s the famous line that stays with me, especially when I’m feeling depressed: “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”

2) “Hero,” Angel, Season One: I agree with Joss Whedon that Doyle did not really fit into the show, although he was certainly likable. So I understand why he had to die. But every time I see him jump to his death, every time I see him melting, every time I see him dying as he tries to unplug the Beacon… he’s a hero. And then they move to the video clip of his “commercial,” and it’s just heartbreaking. Okay, misting again.

3) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: We were driving to Florida, and I was reading Rebecca for my seventh grade English class. The narrator was walking down the stairs in her beautiful costume for the party based on the portrait. She doesn’t feel as plain and ordinary as she usually does. She feels like a princess. Then Maxim looks furious and demands that she go back upstairs to change into something plainer. It’s the caterpillar turning into a butterfly and then being crushed beneath an insensitive boot. I cried for about seven full minutes in the car, alarming my mother. It’s the only book that has made me cry at any point (although I teared up at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

4) Air Bud: Shut up. I don’t know why this heartfelt animal movie affected me more than others, but it did. When the boy takes the dog on a ferry to a field and tells him that he can’t stay with the boy, that hurts. Then the boy starts crying and telling the dog that he hates him and doesn’t want him, even though it’s clear he does, and the dog is just staring, uncomprehending. Then the boy throws the basketball really far, the dog goes after it, and the boy runs for the ferry. When the dog brings the basketball back, he doesn’t know where his boy is. I die a little inside every time.

5) “Some Things are Meant to Be” / “Days of Plenty,” Little Women the Musical: I have never actually seen the musical, but I listen to the soundtrack all the time. Over the last four years of going between my home town and my university town (about six hours one way), I’ve had a lot of time to develop emotional resonance when I’m singing in my car. I can call up tears fairly well by inserting myself into the characters I sing as well as drawing on my emotional experiences. So I can drop a few tears enough to indicate sorrow physically, and then I can usually pull back. These two songs together make this nearly impossible. I always make sure that I have a bunch of tissues if I’m going to sing with this soundtrack.

6) Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (movie): This is just a triumvirate of tears. The first thing that gets me going is when Lena stares out at the sea and wonders why she can’t let anyone in, why she can’t let herself go and love. This always hits me where I live because I’m not prone toward opening up, and I sometimes feel the consequences of that. The second thing that gets me is the Tibby/Bailey storyline (Jenna Boyd is going to be big, I know it, and I just love Amber Tamblyn). Death is a scary thing, and watching Tibby adjust to the idea with the audience, well… I needed lots of movie theater napkins. Only to need more when America Ferrara as Carmen started crying when she called her dad about how she feels abandoned. And I just keep watching the movie. You’d think I would learn the first time.

7) The Little Princess (movie): The very end gets my mom and me every time. When Sara is screaming at her dad to remember her, and he just can’t. That’s bad enough. And then he does remember, and you watch it on his face, the heartbreak of realizing what he had forgotten. And then he runs out and yells, “Sara!” God, so much emotion in that. She runs to him and jumps into his arms and they’re both crying in the rain… there I go again, all misty just from the memory. Needless to say, this is another movie I torture myself with now and then.

“For Good,” Wicked the Musical: I cry as I sing this song for two different reasons. Once, I completely lost it while singing it from the perspective of a duet with my brother. It was my first year away, and I’m close with my brother. I think that while I have my moments, he has the ability to be quite the person, so much more liked, so much more successful because he’s more extroverted and has chosen several professions that might be more lucrative than my own choices. I’m just so proud of him. So if I sing for Elphaba, it makes me cry in both sadness and happiness. Other times, I just cry because I feel both the characters inside, two incredibly close friends forever parted.

9) It’s a Wonderful Life: No, I don’t cry when George has his epiphany… or any time in George’s adult life, really. Not that these times aren’t affecting, it’s just that they don’t make me cry. I do cry, however, when George comes back from his dad’s to Mr. Gower’s, and Mr. Gower hits him. Then George tells Mr. Gower what he almost did, and you see Mr. Gower realize his mistake that might have cost lives. He reaches to embrace George, and George backs away in fear, crying, “Don’t hit me, sir.” But Mr. Gower finally embraces him and bursts into tears. It’s just a really powerful scene in such a short amount of time.

10) The Sixth Sense: Seems an unusual choice, yes? It’s because of the end, not the end between Malcolm and his wife, but the end between Cole and his mother. Why am I so affected by mothers who are afraid that they’re not good enough for their children? It’s not like I’m a mother myself. Anyway, when Cole tells his mother about Grandma seeing her dance, and his mother tells him that she asked Grandma whether she makes her mother proud… and the scene ends with his mother knowing what Cole has been through by seeing ghosts, and they’re hugging. It hurts my heart in a good way, that kind of breakthrough.

ETA: 11) An essential one that never fails to make me cry – Moulin Rouge: That last scene in which Satine dies is heartbreaking. And mostly it’s because Ewan MacGregor as Christian breaks down completely. Usually in movies and TV, you see silent tears from men, if any at all. It’s another thing to see a man so hurt that he doesn’t care what he looks like or how he sounds. There’s a moment when the wail he makes is chillingly affective (and effective).

In honor of Halloween, I thought this would be an appropriate post for the day.

For my Death and Beyond religion class, I did a 7-8 page research paper on whether the concept of ghosts and postmortem apparitions were compatible with Christian theology. I based a great deal of it on scriptures within the Hebrew Bible and New Testament as well as on a relatively conservative Christian view (which, fortunately for me, is intensely scriptural). The point of the paper was to neither prove the existence of ghosts nor render the Bible inaccurate or contradictory. The purpose was to see whether the Bible could be reconciled to fit the idea of the dead communicating to and within the world of the living when it is generally believed that the souls of the dead leave the body and go elsewhere to a place where they are judged and wait for the Final Judgment Day. I came to two different conclusions: from a narrow conservative perspective that depends on the entirely literal interpretation of the Bible, ghosts are not compatible with Christianity. However, if one were to allow for a metaphorical reading of the afterlife within the Bible, ghosts are compatible with Christianity. In other words, my metaphorical conclusion (as well as my Jesus conclusion that we’ll talk about later) is probably unorthodox at best and heretical at worst. I feel subversive already!

For a bit of definition clarification, there is a difference between ghosts and apparitions. Not everyone agrees on these definitions, but these are the ones that I use. There are four kinds of apparitions, and the first two occur prior to a person’s death. I discarded those two. The other two are of a person who has been dead for some time and haunting apparitions. These are not always ghosts. Apparitions do not necessary have to have a personality or consciousness – they do not have to be the manifestation of a dead person’s soul. They can be echoes, quasi-hallucinations (quasi in that they can be seen by more than one person), rationalizations, or paranormal spirits that aren’t connected to a prior human body. From a Christian perspective, they can be angels or demons. Ghosts, on the other hand, are spirits of the dead. In other words, ghosts are apparitions, but not all apparitions are ghosts. If I use the word apparition in this post, I mean it to include both the ghostly and nonghostly entities unless stated otherwise.

Ghosts in the Old Testament

“I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people. … A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.” (Lev. 20: 6, 27)

“Let no one be found among you … who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.” (Deut. 18:10-11)

One of the main reasons that some Christians refuse to support the concept of ghosts comes from the Leviticus and Deuteronomy admonitions against mediums, spiritists, and other people who contact the dead. For instance, the most popular admonition in Leviticus is found after the condemnation of those who follow Molech and those who engage in what the law considers sexual immorality. I find the association of idolatry, attending mediums, and sexual immortality interesting . To depend on mediums means to put one’s trust in an entity separate from Him – the Law demonstrates how the Israelites could come closer to God through ritual purity and by avoiding what the Israelites believed to be Canaanite (a people who probably didn’t do much more than “idolatry” – demonization of the opponent is a popular tactic) practices. A verse in Isaiah confirms this: “When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isaiah 8:19)

Furthermore, the verse in Isaiah indicates that humans, dead or alive, are fallible while God is infallible. It doesn’t denounce the potential of mediums to actually contact the dead, but why trust humans when you can trust God? Potentially, someone who approached a medium with a solid dose of skepticism along with open-mindedness might obey the spirit of the law rather than the letter (and who obeys all the law these days anyway?).

The reason why I bring up the possibility that the Bible believes in the abilities of some mediums is because of the story of Saul visiting the medium to contact Samuel in 1 Samuel 28. In the story of Saul visiting the medium, the author of 1 Samuel makes it clear that Saul drove out the mediums and spiritists from Israel because of the Law detailed above. Because the Lord did not communicate with him, he became desperate and found an illegal medium in order to contact the prophet Samuel. The medium conjures Samuel, and Samuel tells Saul how the Philistines will win and kill Saul and his family because he did not obey the Lord in other things (1 Samuel 28: 18-19). The verses make it clear that Saul actually speaks with Samuel and not an evil spirit imitating Samuel’s voice: “Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground” (1 Samuel 28:14). Also, Samuel’s prophecy was true while the devil deals in lies. In 1 Chronicles, the author states that the reason for Saul’s death was not that an evil spirit fooled him but that he circumvented direct council with the Lord by consulting a medium (10: 13-14). Through this story, I concluded that the scripture considers the medium’s ability to contact the dead legitimate. Therefore, the Hebrew Bible supports the idea that the dead have contact with the living rather than being separated in heaven or hell.

Ghosts in the New Testament

“During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost [in some translations, ‘apparition’ is used instead],” they said, and cried out in fear.” (Matt. 14: 25-26)

“There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.” (Mark 9: 3-4)

“The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” (Matthew 27: 52-53)

Because the New Testament (especially the Gospels) holds more weight among Christians than the Hebrew Bible, I find particular significance in the presence of ghosts and apparitions within the Gospels. For one thing, the disciples themselves believed in the existence of ghosts. In the first bullet point story of Jesus walking on water, the author of the Matthew gospel (as well as the other authors) use the disciples as foils for the truth that Jesus brings with him by depicting the disciples as simple or superstitious. However, the disciples also demonstrate basic Hebrew knowledge for the time, and the declaration that the disciples feared Jesus might have been a ghost or apparition when he walked on water bears considering, even if he was not.

An even more convincing story in Matthew that supports the concept of ghosts or deceased beings that communicate with the living occurs during the Great Transfiguration. While the theological case can be made that Elijah, like Enoch, never died because God swept him up in a whirlwind, the same case cannot be made of Moses, who died before he reached the Promised Land, as stated in the Deuteronomy 34. Yet they appeared out of thin air before living witnesses and conversed with a living man and emitted a bright light, one of the typical symbols of ghostly apparitions.

The last bullet point may seem a little counterintuitive – after all, the NIV verse says that the saints came back to life, but this declaration becomes problematic without any historical record. While the incident of Lazarus might easily evade legal notice, an entire legion of formerly dead people walking the streets deserves widespread mention that it never received. Rather than immediately dismiss the scriptures as inaccurate, I propose that these beings were apparitions that later dissipated, especially when one considers the word “appeared” in the context of the verse – the same “appeared” is found in the Great Transfiguration mentioned above (Matthew 27: 53; Mark 9: 4). However, even with these verses, the most compelling (as well as the most heretical) evidence for ghosts in the New Testament and the most widely discussed incidence in my research is Jesus himself after his resurrection.

And here’s where I get unorthodox/heretical. Strap yourselves in.

Jesus as Apparition

“Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17)

“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.” (Luke 24: 13-16)

Attributing Jesus’s various appearances after his death to his postmortem apparitional nature clears up some of the inconsistencies between the gospel and Pauline accounts. In fact, James McClenon called it the “most important haunting case in history.” The incident in which Jesus shows himself to be most ghostly occurs in the first bulleted verses. This implies that he was incorporeal at the time. In another incident on the two followers’ walk to the town Emmaus, Jesus is in a solid state, but those people strangely do not recognize him. One would think that they would, especially given that there’s no question the followers have seen him since Jesus deliberately made sure they couldn’t recognize him! When they do recognize him, he breaks bread with them and subsequently disappears, implying that certain physical laws no longer matter to him. The ability to appear and disappear often applies to apparitions, as I mentioned earlier. The most problematic to the Jesus as Apparition theory comes in Luke: “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.” (Luke 24: 37-42)

In this section, the author of Luke gives several proofs against the idea that Jesus was a ghost: He appears to be Jesus, he has a solid form, and he eats. However, the author of Luke assumes that these are sufficient proofs when modern studies of apparitions show that apparitions can pass through solid objects and subsequently present themselves as solid beings. Also, some Asian religions set out food for ghosts to eat, so the ability to consume food does not automatically rule out Jesus as apparition. I mentioned before discussing the possibilities that Jesus was an apparition that saying so might be heretical; however, declaring that Jesus was an apparition or ghost, while it has the potential to contradict Christian doctrine, does not necessarily disprove it. It does, on the other hand, have serious philosophical implications and requires a little reworking of theological concepts of afterlife. This reworking, depending on the Christian group, may definitely be heretical.

Philosophical and Theological Implications

The difference between ghosts and apparitions as discussed at the beginning of the essay becomes important in the case of Jesus as a possible apparition. A ghost implies a personality or spirit that survives beyond death. An apparition, on the other hand, can simply be a quasi-hallucination that does not require an actual personality behind it. Not all apparitions or hauntings indicate the presence of a person’s deceased spirit. Also, as the Walk to Emmaus story shows, the apparition was not always recognized as Jesus, which implies that the shape of his form (or the perception of his form) changed among all the people to whom he appeared. There’s a strong possibility that Jesus’s suggestion during his life that he would return subconsciously informed the later appearances and that his circumstances of a violent death and presentation of wondrous events during his lifetime lay the groundwork for rich possibility of an apparition (see: all Jesus, Mary, and Elvis sightings).

All of these possibilities that Jesus’s appearances to his followers may not have come from a survived personality does not, however, negate the possibility that Jesus as a ghostly apparition returned in his resurrected body, indicating what the resurrected body means for everyone who dies. That the apparition or ghostly body on earth may be the resurrected body brings up new implications for Christian theology about the afterlife.

Christian theology traditionally presumes that the soul separates from the body and inters in either a paradise or a hell (or an intermediate state) separate from the world – this is a literal interpretation of the scriptures, but a metaphorical one might be more appropriate in order to accommodate the concept of ghosts and postmortem apparitions that communicate in our world. The most important bearing on religion that the existence of apparitions offers comes from the possibility of a life beyond death of some kind, but this apparitional state as the resurrected body does not determine the existence of heaven or hell in any way: “Resurrection is supposed to be either markedly pleasant, or markedly unpleasant, whereas, according to the evidence, the state of those who communicate with us is often not markedly pleasant, and, though frequently not such as a discerning person would wish to find himself in, seldom markedly unpleasant either. So far as is known, there is no correlation between one’s faith or works in this world and one’s state in the world or worlds revealed to us by these communications” (Harrison 114). There is not even a guarantee that just because there is evidence of personal survival, the survival is eternal. It is possible that the soul/spirit/personality fades over time.

There is, however, a Christian-friendly argument by stating that the quality of life after death may not be a matter of a spatially different place for the saved and the damned – the heaven and hell would be the making of the survived personality in his apparitional body that spatially exists among the world of the living, just on different planes of existence. So Jesus’s resurrected apparitional body may, in fact, work as a demonstration of our own resurrected body from a Christian perspective, and as long as you don’t take a too literal view of the Biblical descriptions of hell and heaven, it’s not a stretch to think that heaven and hell is simply what you make of it after surviving death.

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Harrison, Jonathan. “Religion and Psychical Research.” Philosophy and Psychical Research. Ed. Shivesh C. Thakur. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1976.

The Holy Bible. NIV. www.biblegateway.com. Gospel Communications International. 1995-2008.

Lewis, Hywel D. “Religion and the Paranormal.” Philosophy and Psychical Research. Ed. Shivesh C. Thakur. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1976.

McClenon, James. Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Neff, H. Richard. Psychic Phenomena and Religion: ESP, Prayer, Healing, Survival. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1971.
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The books above are my resources, if you would like to look into them. I apologize for not properly citing them MLA style throughout the entire post, but it doesn’t seem like anyone else does that on blog posts, and I defer to the majority.

I spent all this time writing from a point of view I don’t particularly take anymore. It was an interesting exercise, one inspired by several horror movies, particularly the movie The Others, which addresses the question directly. Its answer to the compatibility question is “No.” But again, that’s from a completely literal translation. From a metaphorical translation, they were in hell until they realized what they were. The movie 1408 also addressed the question to a degree. Its answer was “Yes.” Seeing his daughter and believing it was her brought back Mike’s belief in God (and by virtue of that, Jesus – there was a Bible involved).

But since I am not a Christian anymore, and the Bible is just a beautiful piece of literature, what is my view on ghosts/apparitions/afterlife?

To tell you the truth, I am not sure what to think. I have never experienced any paranormal phenomena, whether it’s ESP or indications of an afterlife. I’ve read about different possibilities, and some ring more likely than others. But in the end, there just isn’t good enough proof. I think the idea that the consciousness may live on after death might be possible, and some anecdotal evidence (read: “evidence” that wouldn’t be acceptable in any debate) sounds promising. But I’m not going to depend on that. Because it isn’t proof. As far as I know, we live for a little while, and then we die. And that’s it. It’s not comforting (which is probably why I still devour books on spirituality in hope that one of them will answer my questions definitively… none have managed to do so yet, if ever), but it’s all I can know.