WTF Just Happened?

Alternate titles: Media Roundup; Waste Time with Me.

Is God Evil?

The Center for Action and Contemplation meditated on the story of Job the week before this. It coincided with what I heard Jon Ronson discuss in his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, where a bunch of people had their lives reduced to shit over some overblown faux pas or misunderstanding.

I’m not the first to say it – pretty sure I got the idea from Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens – but if God is all good, then he’s not all powerful; or if God is all powerful, then he’s not all good. I tend to believe the latter. I think he’s a trickster with a shadow side that he’s ashamed of, just like us. I’m not even sure God is real beyond being a mental/emotional construct.

In the meditations, Rabbi Harold Kushner determined that God must be the former; not a god of power but of justice. The answers we find as we wrestle with the mystery of evil reflect directly on us. Loving God the way Job did is an intimacy that can only be reached by people who have overcome their blame-reflex. I’m not that spiritually mature yet.

I believe in volition, that awareness must attend choice. Even if your choice has already been determined, you’re accountable for it. (Thanks, Mark Manson.) If God is real, then he’s powerful enough to take some responsibility. Power without responsibility is the model that’s been holding us down for millennia. Surely, a god of justice is powerful enough to answer for that.

Did you know? This whole cosmic moral quandary is known as theodicy, and it’s pronounced like–

The Odyssey

Loved this take from Jon Stewart on how Christopher Nolan’s latest project was a sequel to his previous one. Then I watched FD Signifier’s take. While he kind of tossed it off as “Graham Platner: The Movie” (a position I don’t fully understand) his insights were eye-opening: this iteration of The Odyssey translates the epic Greek poem into art for modern Judeo-Christian Conservatives, but a lot of the American Right is too hooked on white supremacy to appreciate any of that.

Ezra Klein’s take included reference to a book that’s been on my to-read list for over ten years: Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World. While I love finding community as an admirer of the archetype, I disagree with Klein’s conclusion that “the age of tricksters” is ending so that an age of straight-forward order can begin. No. We’ll always need benevolent tricksters, in the best of times and the worst.

Speaking of Which

There exists a Ben Palmer: a comedian who trolls agents of pyramid schemes, racists and woman-haters. I want to join a bloodless revolution by occupying a similar role. If Palmer developed a team of pranksters, I would apply. I have questions about how he gets away with impersonating the entities he’s satirizing, but maybe the answer is in the question. All I know is he’s doing the Lord’s work and I want to help.