I found a book entitled “Ten Great Religions”. This particular volume is hardcover and printed in the year 1883. The cover is worn and the pages quite yellow, but for the most part it’s in pretty good shape. The front and back covers are thick green, and in gold there is very old fashioned engraved lettering containing the title and beneath, a layered ring encapsulating the ten great religions in a sort of gothic design. There is no doubt that this book has traveled around during the last 125 years. It retains a sort of “sorcery” feel.
I brought the book to work and had it sitting on my desk when Gwen, an inquisitive and charming friend of mine, picked it up and started flipping through it. On the title page, written in green ink obviously from a pen requiring an ink well to use, and probably 100 years old, Gwen found a sentence written by hand from a previous owner. She read the passage aloud:
“The best thing God has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life. Page 345<>
She looked up at me and asked if this book was cursed. Perhaps the first owner cut his wrists or something. The passage itself, combined with the very nature of this ancient tomb (by our standards in
Gwen put the book back on my desk and passed the creepy feeling onto me. Surely the person who wrote this was disturbed. Had I purchased a cursed item? I entertained the idea.
Obviously this quote, written by hand, was condoning suicide. Not just condoning it, but recommending it as a course of action; almost saying: “suicide is good, try it sometime”.
“The best thing god has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life” can not be interpreted too many different ways. It is pretty clear what this is saying. Suicide is God’s gift to man. What kind of religion says this?
I then went to page 345 and looked at the entire passage quoted:
“All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God is, if in truth he be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the compass of man’s understanding to know. But it is a foolish delusion, which has sprung from human weakness and human pride, to imagine that such an infinite spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men. It is difficult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures; since the other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and wants that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life.”
Given a little greater context than the last few words of the passage had given me, I now have a greater insight as to that writing on the title page of my ancient new book.
This passage sounded quite contemporary to me, as if a modern atheist was describing the failings of Christianity. More importantly, the creepiness of the last few words was lost in what was now obviously an intellectual exercise. The original opinion of that passage condoning, even recommending suicide was totally wrong. The real meaning of the passage was to point out man’s conceit and arrogance. This was an indictment of the human animal and all his wants and contradictions and how he wraps these evils up in the blanket of religion. How religion both reflects and encapsulates the folly of man. And in the midst of this great pit of want, fear and weakness, and total lack of virtue, the greatest gift this foul human animal has had bestowed upon him from the God he imagined is the ability to remove his existence from the cosmos; his existence being that dismal.
Well, not a very cheery thought, but certainly a completely different feel than “suicide is good, try it sometime”. This now sounds more like “your religion is the result of your own hubris; the best that it grants you is the removal of your own existence”.
As I read further, I found that the author of the book was talking about the ancient religions of
So, as it turns out, the passage written in my title page has nothing to do with what I had originally believed was an obvious meaning. “Suicide is good, try it sometime.”
Instead, the author was using this quote from Pliny the elder to demonstrate the fall of the ancient Roman religion and how it was expressed at that time.
This all became relevant to me when I applied it to today’s world of the “sound byte”.
So many of our modern truths distributed so efficiently to us are taken in little bits and pieces and delivered to us without proper context. It makes one realize that anyone can take any work of literature, religion or science and extract from it any meaning they choose to find. In reality, nothing is obvious to those who value intellect above all else. The simple and the obvious are for those souls too lethargic to find the truth on their own. It is much easier and less painful (in the short term) to believe what you hear than to question it and find empirical evidence to prove its truth. Finding the context of any statement determines its meaning. It also requires work.
Here is a sound byte for you. See if you can put it into context.
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” -Dick Cheney
“President Bush would have ordered an invasion of
No comments:
Post a Comment