God is Red



God is Red fascinated me.  Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2006) was a Yankton Sioux activist.  His great-grandfather was a medicine man.  His grandfather was a chief who became a priest.  His father rose to an executive position in the Episcopal Church.  Deloria graduated from a seminary, but chose not to become a minister, because of his father’s frustrations.  He sought a path that could be of greater benefit to Native American people.

There are three editions of God is Red (1973, 1992, 2003), spanning a turbulent 30 year era — aim for the newest version.  The book provides important views omitted from the glorious saga of Western civilization.  Even the 1973 edition was well ahead of mainstream society in foreseeing ecological catastrophe, the destination of our runaway train.  We’re not a good path.  Why are we on it?  That’s the question that drives this book.  Deloria’s search for understanding is presented from a Native American perspective.

All civilized people are descendants of tribal ancestors.  Unique religions emerged in each tribal homeland, fine-tuned to its landscape, ecology, and climate.  Every homeland had sacred places where the community participated in special ceremonies.  All members of the tribe had deep roots in the homeland, and all shared the same worldview.  A tribal person “does not live in a tribe, the tribe lives in him.”

In modern society, neighborhoods are constantly-changing swarms of occupants having highly diverse incomes, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and political views.  People may live side by side for years, yet have nothing in common, and sometimes intense differences.  Many do not know the names or faces of most folks in their neighborhood.  This is not a coherent community sharing a profound sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of their ecosystem.

The Western conception of time is not about the eternal cycles of passing seasons; it is linear — a bloody one-way pilgrimage from the miracle of creation to the tumultuous end of the world, a constantly intensifying cyclone of population, progress, pollution, and bad craziness.  Humans are simultaneously the crown of creation, superior to all other life on the planet, yet each newborn inherently flawed, via the curse of original sin.

Jesus of Nazareth was a radical and intriguing Jewish thinker who lived in occupied Palestine.  He was not fond of the Roman storm troopers, materialism, or greed.  Just live simply and be nice.  At that time, in the Mediterranean basin, and in many surrounding regions, the tribal era was long gone.  It had mutated into a number of civilizations.  Common folks lived under the thumb of elites.  Life was harsh.  Regional bloodbaths were common.

For a while, the members of the Jesus movement were all Jews.  When Jesus died, his followers believed that he was the long anticipated Messiah, and that he “would return almost immediately with an angelic army to judge the world.”  So, they quit working.  Before long, they went bankrupt.  They had no doubt that he would return during their lifetime.  They were wrong.  He didn’t. 

A bit later, they opened the door to allowing gentiles into the Jesus movement.  From this point forward, it was no longer a community having a common ethnic identity.  This was the first step on the path to becoming a multinational religion, the one and only absolute truth for everyone, in every place, for all eternity.

Over time, the Jesus movement expanded into other regions.  In Rome, many joined the parade.  Growing numbers led to the birth of a religious institution — the Roman Catholic Church.  By and by, the Roman Empire was rotting away from decadence and delirium, softening it up for a spectacular blind date with vicious mobs of bloodthirsty barbarians.  The collapse of the Empire created a power vacuum that was taken over by the Church, which proceeded to expand its domain and accumulate enormous wealth and power.

True believers waited for the return of the Messiah for years, then decades, then centuries.  This was getting boring.  One day, a revelation from God arrived — the Messiah could not return until all nations had heard the story of Jesus.  So, believers shifted their preaching and teaching into high gear.  Like the Roman Empire, the Roman Church became devoted to perpetual growth and the accumulation of wealth.  Kings and Popes worked hand in hand to conquer, colonize, and convert distant lands.  The missionaries wanted to save heathen souls, and the states wanted to relieve the converts of their valuable resources, exploit their labor, and collect taxes.

And so, Christendom spread across Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia.  Colonists eventually arrived in America.  Epidemics of Old World diseases rapidly spread, killing maybe ninety percent of the Indians.  The buffalo robe fad exterminated 40 to 60 million bison.  Fur traders nearly eliminated the beavers.  Loggers mowed down vast virgin forests.  The cavalry slaughtered those Indians who resisted surrendering their freedom.

Tribal folks were not amused.  They were confused, perplexed, and pissed.  A missionary would convert them to the one true faith, and a year later the next missionary would inform them that the first one was a demonic fire hose of lies and deceptions.  All the black robes read the same book, but none agreed on what it meant.  WTF?  Especially aggravating was the enormous gulf between the beautiful beliefs they taught, and the relentless brutality of the colonial society, and its frantic gang rape of their ecosystem.  Meanwhile, back in Europe, instead of brotherly love, Christian nations endlessly waged war on one another.

When the Church shifted into globalization mode, and the Reformation shattered it into numerous denominations, the sweet teachings of Jesus largely got thrown under the bus.  Many express deep concern for zygotes embedded in uterine walls, but display far less compassion for the infants that eventually squirt out of the womb.  When American economic interests are threatened, reverence for human life stops, and the Marines are sent to mow down the enemy of the month, as well as innocent bystanders.

Deloria maintained a sense of humor.  He had a lot of fun with his chapter on popular Christianity — the theme parks, Jesus freaks, pussy grabbing faith healers, shameless money-hustling televangelists, and mega-church prosperity cults.  “The evangelical and fundamentalist wing of Christianity dwells on the figure of Jesus, and on the theology of old time religion.  Yet their knowledge about Jesus, his times, and the early church is nearly nil.”  Sunday school taught me nothing about the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Thirty Years War.

Today we’re flying along on a joyride to Judgment Day, which is mere months or days away, maybe.  In polite conversation, it remains rude to contemplate our responsibility for leaving behind a somewhat habitable planet for the kiddies.  “It takes incredible willpower to pretend that history is the unfolding of a divine plan for humanity.  In less than two and a half centuries, American whites have virtually destroyed a whole continent.” 

Deloria concludes, “Who will find peace with the lands?  The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things.  Who will listen to the trees, the animals and the birds, the voices of the places of the land?  As the long-forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors.  That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.”

Deloria, Vine, God is Red: A Native View of Religion, 3d ed, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado, 2003.

YouTube offers a number of Deloria videos.

The Dawn of World Renewal

My ancestors include tribal people who inhabited the ancient forests of Norway, Wales, and Germany.  Bits and pieces of their myths and folkways have managed to survive the passage of centuries.  These people lived close to wild nature, and venerated oak trees, salmon, wolves, ravens, mistletoe, thunder, rainbows, and so on.

Their cultural heroes were a pantheon of human gods and goddesses who possessed metal weapons, chariots, and domesticated horses.  Clearly, these stories were not from the era of hunter-gatherers.  Their deities were not all knowing and omnipotent; they could be deceived, or make foolish mistakes.  They were mortals who would someday die.

Like many triumphant sagas, these heroes eventually became victims of their own success.  Prophecies had long predicted the twilight of the gods.  Their fatal mistake was fettering the four forces of nature — Surt the giant (volcanoes and earthquakes), the Midgard Serpent (turbulent seas), the Fenris wolf (powerful animal wildness), and Loki the trickster (fire and air).

With nature fettered, the world tumbled out of balance.  Wolves swallowed the sun and moon.  Fimbulwinter brought nonstop snow for three seasons, followed by three seasons of nasty weather.  Earthquakes pulverized mountains, and the world was covered with a thick layer of ice.  Society plunged into helter-skelter.  One day, the four forces of nature broke free, and obliterated the gods at the battle of Ragnarök.

Surt the giant spread fire over the whole world, leaving behind nothing but naked soil.  Flames purified the land.  Then the rivers and seas rose up, and all dry land was submerged by a huge flood.  In Norse Mythology, Peter Andreas Munch described the dawn of world renewal with a beautiful line: “Out of the sea there rises a new earth, green and fair, whose fields bear their increase without the sowing of seed.”

Later, a new deity arrived, when the black robes from civilization forcibly penetrated northern Europe.  They had just one god.  He created the world and all living things.  Humans were his masterpiece, made in his image.  Our original home was a wilderness paradise, the Garden of Eden.  At this point, we had everything we needed — food, water, clean air, a magnificent ecosystem, and a hot date.

Like any other healthy wild animal, Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed.  The lad and lass were permitted to eat the fruit of any tree, except one — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Like many other animals, they really liked apples.  The creator was a peculiar stranger.  Imagine telling a wolf not to eat the bunny of good and evil.  What does “good” and “evil” mean to naked wild animals?

A serpent, another mysterious stranger, highly recommended the forbidden fruit, “…your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”  They indulged.  Suddenly, they were extremely embarrassed about their beautiful animal bodies.  The creator gave them some leather clothes, and threw them out of paradise, “to till the ground from whence he was taken.”  The punishment for disobeying the creator’s instructions was to be condemned to the drudgery of farming.

The troublesome humans had many children, grandchildren, etc.  The growing mob really got on the creator’s nerves.  Man was unbelievably wicked, and “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  Humans were a terrible mistake, and the creator regretted creating us.  “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air.”

The creator told Noah to build an ark and load it with wild critters.  Then it rained for forty days and forty nights, and the mountains were covered.  The flood lasted 150 days.  Everything not on the ark died.  The creator was happy again.  Yet the surviving humans were still flawed critters.  He realized this, but took pity on his imperfect boo-boos.  “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.”  He told Noah’s family to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”  You and I are their flawed descendants.

There are many versions of this story, and Genesis was included in the Bible.  Another version is The First Book of Adam and Eve.  In it, the two humans were motivated to eat the forbidden fruit by a “desire for divinity, greatness, and an exalted state.”  The creator told Adam that before he impulsively ate the apple, “thou hadst a bright nature within thee, and for that reason couldst thou see things afar off.”

The Hebrew flood story is similar to the story of the nearby Sumerians.  The Sumerian version says that the gods were drunk when they created humans.  This is why every human has at least one serious defect.  Eventually, the gods could no longer tolerate humankind, because we made too much noise.  The gods couldn’t sleep.  At this point, Ziusudra (a mortal human) was instructed to build a large barge, gather up specimens of the various animal species, and spare them from the coming floods.

There literally were great floods in the ancient Fertile Crescent.  Archeologists have discovered a heavy layer of silt in the region, which dates to around 2900 B.C.  Because the civilizations converted vast ancient forests into fields, flooding must have been frequent, and sometimes catastrophic.

Anyway, the Teutonic, Hebrew, and Sumerian stories describe, in various ways, the notion that humans are flawed.  Certainly, in these three cultures, humans did not live in harmony with the family of life, and their stories throbbed with weird vibes.  In all three stories, the prime troublemakers (and countless innocent critters) were drowned, setting the stage for world renewal, a beautiful healing.

Portions of the Jesus saga offer a more wholesome message.  One day, he dropped out and headed for the hills.  After being baptized by a wild holy man, Jesus was filled with spirit power.  He went to the wilderness, and spent 40 days in the perfection of creation.  This experience flooded his heart with profound knowledge.  He realized that the civilization around him was insane, and he decided to illuminate his neighbors.  Give away your wealth and live a life of unconditional love.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The Jesus movement fragmented into many variants as it spread.  In the Roman variant, the patriarchs worked aggressively to eliminate all competitors.  They selected an official collection of sacred texts, which was a small subset of the writings generated by the Jesus movement.  The banished texts included a number of gospels — the Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of the Egyptians, Gospel of James, Gospel of Mattheus, Gospel of Truth, and Gospel of Mary.

In 1945, a farmer found an ancient jar near Nag Hammadi in Egypt.  Among the papyrus pages in this jar was the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus.  Here is saying 113:  His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?”  Jesus said, “It will not come by waiting for it.  It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is.’  Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

Look!  Paradise is where your feet are standing.  This sounds remarkably similar to the mindset of the Pygmies, Anishinabe, Inuit, and other wild folks.  Wild cultures don’t tell stories reeking of human supremacy.  The creator might be a frog.  Humans are among the youngest critters in the family of life, mischievous two-year olds playing with plutonium.  We have so much to learn from our older relatives.

It’s interesting to contemplate what a wholesome creation story would sound like.  Imagine a story where we skipped the toxic apple, remained in the garden, and lived in balance with the family of life, like the deer and ravens.  When we inform our offspring that they were flawed before they were born, the result is the world outside your window — a bloody lunatic asylum.

And so, today, we’re zooming down the Ragnarök Expressway, and Big Mama Nature will once again hurl the crazy mob into oblivion, big brains and all.  When the storms pass, fires burn out, and floodwaters recede, the dawn of world renewal will rise once again, “a new earth, green and fair.”