Something very interesting happened yesterday, and I already told some of you this story.
I was driving downtown to the county library, through that part that around greenfeild and 16th that's really kind of sketchy, you know the place. Anyway, I stop at this stoplight behind this old busted-ass buick or some other old person car. And this guy gets out of the car. He's an older black man, kind of a big guy, and he looks at me and starts walking towards my car. I don't know if it was because I made eye contact, or just cause I was the next car behind him, but he comes straight for me. At this point, I'm more than a little sketched out. But I turn down the tunes and roll down the window. Now I can see that the man is visibly distraught, and he starts telling me this story. I couldn't understand half of what he was saying, partly because he was an old black man, but mostly because he was on the verge of tears. Anyway, it had something to do with somebody had gotten in a bad car accident and had been airlifted to the hospital in Chapel Hill. He was running out of gas, didn't have any money, but really needed to get to Chapel Hill because it was his wife or daughter or something. So I told him I didn't really know how to help him out except give him some cash for a tank of gas to get there. I didn't know how else to help, and I'm not sure what he might have been expecting, but he was very grateful, God bless you, and all of that. Then he wanted to get my name and stuff so he could pay me back, but I told him not to worry about that, cause this stuff can happen to anybody, he can do something for somebody else that needs it. Here's the thing though; I don't normally carry a lot of cash, I just happened to stop by the ATM cause I knew I was going to have to pay for parking and stuff downtown. So I just happened to have a $20. I guess that helped him out, that'd get him half a tank, which would get him to Chapel Hill.
So I'm a pretty trusting guy I guess, but I could tell this guy was legit. He obviously wasn't trying to mug me, or he would have. He couldn't have made that up, and you can just tell these things, you know. Anyway, I was so close, so very very close to telling him an atheist did that for him. But I didn't. That probably would have been rude and inapprpriate. So I didn't. Part of me does still want to see the look on his face if I had told him that though. Oh well. Anyway, point is it turns out I'm actually a pretty decent person sometimes, so get off my ass.
A little warning, if you're not in for a hell of a thing, get ready to brace yourself. It's gonna be classic Watson with a little more theology than you're used to, and if you actually get what I'm talking about, it's going to get really dark.
Being a male, I have long measured my life based on my accomplishments. Things I have done define who I am, as evident by the fact that everything I do, own, and wear has a story behind it. That has also to do with my Indian story-telling religion, but that's a different discussion. The point is, I put everything into this category, including women. It's about conquering, especially conquering the unconquerable, which is why I'm often attracted to the women that I'm attracted to. But recently a whole different thing happened, and it totally blew my mind, so I wanted to share it with you. It has everything to do with women, and it also has everything to do with religion, which makes it extra sexy Watson style. This time it wasn't about conquering anything, that didn't even matter. The feeling wasn't one of conquest, like it so often is, but oddly a feeling of redemption. And I suddenly realized that's how it's always been. It's been such a constant struggle for not just attention, but affection, that there's a almost a sense of Machiavellian retribution when I finally get even a taste of it, even as little as eye contact. It's that final redemption, almost in the sense of religion. That's when I started thinking, and that's where it got really,
really weird, and totally cool.
The redemption I'm talking about is the kind of thing you didn't realize you were missing until you find it, kind of like the way people talk about religion or love. Don't read too much into that, I'm just trying to give the idea of the magnitude. I suddenly realized that what I've been questing for, what the Desperado was desperate for, was exactly that. Forgiveness. And I think I understand Christianity a lot better now, I understand the feeling Christians have towards their concept of god. That's when I was reminded of the prodigal son. The confession of sin, and subsequent redemption, is only significant when there has been a sin, a prodigal straying and return home. People have told me to look to my family, my mother, for that kind of forgiveness, but how can my mother give me that? The Jewish Talmud has a proverb: If you want to know a man's character, don't ask his mother; ask his neighbors. The unconditional love of family doesn't provide forgiveness, precisely because it is unconditional, and therefore it is irrelevant either way. She doesn't know my character, or my sins. The mother can be the safety net, but not the ladder upwards. Redemption can only come from the one to whom you have confessed. That means the Father. The mother is the earth, the real, the support from underneath that gives us physical life. The Father is above, the spiritual life. He is the one who judges us, and gives us redemption. How does he do that? Through the son. It's through the blood of the son, but more importantly the simple existence of the son that we can be redeemed. I'm starting to sound a lot like an Indian again, and I love the Native view of this stuff, but it's in Christianity too, these are universal archetypes, even for me as an atheist. I took that really far out and theological, so let me bring it back for you.
Those of you who know me well, think about what I'm talking about in the context of me, because you should obviously know I'm not talking about Christianity. Our quest, our purpose in life has always been, as it is for all living things, simply put, to procreate. To carry on our species, and specifically, our own name. Through the son. It's through the existence of a son that a man is redeemed in the eyes of his father. Archaic I know, but we love it, don't we? I'm not going to say anything, but think about that in reference to me, and you'll see why this struck me. But that's all obvious, so let's take it one step further. How do we do that, and how do we get that? Naturally, it's my other great passion: Women. So with women, I've just discovered, rather than the sense of conquering a territory, when it's real, when it's genuine, and when it's really super sexy powerful, is when I get that sense of redemption. That since that just to get your attention, just that you let me speak to you, means I've been forgiven of all my sins. Just like ancient religions have an obsession with purity before contacting their deities, there's an echo of that with you, that I have to be pure, to confess and repent, and let you redeem me before anything else happens, even eye contact or talking. That's why, just when something simple like that happens, it's like there's been this struggle and redemption, like the prodigal son, and that's the sign of it, the sign of my redemption. Obviously I'm not speaking literally, and I love to shit philosophy, but I think I finally get it. I get something anyway... I've probably lost my mind entirely... thoughts?
I've already talked about how there are two different creation stories in Genesis (The Seven Days story in Genesis 1, and the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 2). It's obvious that's they are two separate stories because not only does the account just start over, but the order and manner in which everything is created is different. However, that is the least of my problems tonight. What I propose to you now is that in these two stores are actually two different gods. At the very least, they are two very different, even contradictory concepts of god, coming from two completely different religious traditions, both of which somehow got incorporated into the Biblical canon.
Even though it's written second in the Bible, Genesis 2 (Adam and Eve) is actually the older story. I won't bore you with the details because I'm going to assume you're all familiar with the basic plot. The god in this story resembles the anthropomorphic deities of the early Mesopotamian civilizations, from whence he likely developed. He physically forms the earth and everything with his hands. He later walks around Eden and talks to the people, even having to look for Adam when he wants to talk to him. Most importantly, though, this god makes mistakes, changes his mind about the way he's done things, and is apparently unable to know future events. If you claim he didn't make any mistakes, or that he did know all future events, then you're opening up the problem of evil, which is way too complex for this discussion, and not the point. Besides, god himself admits to his own fallibility right there in Gen 2:18, so your point is both irrelevant and incorrect. This god is admittedly fallible, human in his characteristics, and neither omnipotent nor omniscient. In other words, these are not the droids you're looking for. This is not the god you people worship. If you worship this god, then you are a heretic.
The god you worship is more like the one in Genesis 1. As these ancient peoples became more sophisticated, so did their concept of God. Besides the fact that this time he does everything in a completely different order, he no longer forms things with his hands out of the dirt, but literally just speaks everything into existence, and everything he does is apparently good. He is transcendent, or beyond the physical existence. This is the type of god who will later speak through angels, visions, and prophets rather than walking around chatting it up with Adam. This is obviously an entirely different god. However, the god of the New Testament, and of the Qur'an also claim to be the same god talked about here, but we all know those are completely different god concepts as well.
Now I don't have an answer for when or how or from where these different ideas came into the oral tradition of Judaism and later the Biblical canon. It's not a mystery or anything, this information is known, I just haven't done that much research. But what I do know is what it says in the Bible. This is just the surface. It isn't hard, you don't have to be a theological expert to read the first few chapters of Genesis and see these glaring contradictions. What's my point, you ask? Am I implying that the early Hebrews were polytheistic? No, because both of these gods are presented as the only god. I'm just pointng out the fact that your religion was influenced by all of the other religions those people came into contact with, and was also influenced by time and the development of society. The god you think of has not always been god, and your god will eventually be replaced by another and another, as people come up with various interpretations, and technological demands and the needs of any particular people require a different god concept. Yours is but one tiny, fleeting god out of many that have come and gone, just within your own religion. Not to mention the other billions upon billions of gods that have been God to all the other people who've ever lived.
You want the eternal, omnipotent, unchanging Truth? Don't look to God. God changes way too often, fickle to the needs of those in power. Look to science, look to history, look to facts. Not religion.
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