Parson to Person

It is late on May 21st as I write to you today, and we have entered the astrological time given over to Gemini, the Twins. In mythology, this famous pair had one mortal member and one immortal member. And things having to do with this sign are usually life-and-death, always seeking better balance but never quite attaining it. A sign fraught with duality, that is for sure.

Why am I telling you this? Before I reveal that, let me thicken the stew a little bit; I am currently reading a series of historical fiction novels dealing with the emergence of a unified England late in the Dark Ages. But while these gore-soaked books are blatantly about Saxons and Northmen and the endless wars of conquest they waged, the real subject matter here is the religious war at hand, between the followers of the old gods, Odin, Thor, and that crowd, and those who cling to the relatively new Christian deity, our Jesus, whom they refer to as ‘the nailed god’.

What is really at stake in the novels is which worldview will dominate and sway the course of humankind. The self-described pagan worldview holds that the gods love chaos and disorder, and that everything is sliding right downhill all the time and will end in eternal conflagration. The Christian view, of course, is quite the opposite, presenting a God of compassion and love who desires nothing more than the upbuilding and perfecting of human society, which will end up in heaven. But as much as I would like to write off astronomy as just so much fiddle-faddle, and as much as I would like to award the religious victor’s crown to Jesus, I have to admit that the duality and polarity in our world to this very day seems to be stratified into these two timeless worldviews.

So here is what I want you to think about; which side of the coin lands heads-up for you? Which twin do you favor, not just intellectually, but in your everyday life? Because what you believe about our common human destiny determines much of your daily reality. If your core belief leans towards the innate perversity and selfishness of people, you will live your time on earth a lot differently than if you believe in people’s inherent goodness and potential. I know, it is a lot to think about on a warm, maybe hot summer day. But that does not make it unimportant to think about…

In the dualistic, Gemini-run world of the novels I have been reading, things are pretty black-and-white, with clear and rigid divisions. But in our nonfiction life, we need to be able to function in the larger diverse group, right? I am sure you have found that even within our own Christian faith, there is enormous polarity and discord, on pretty much every subject. And while we may hide behind doctrine or denominational polity, I suspect that the real root of the discord is conflicting worldviews, conflicting understandings of the nature of God and humankind. We may not be able to change the minds or hearts of others, but we really need to know our own minds and hearts.