Today, I ran across a textbook example of a person using a story-- an entertaining, traditional story-- to help an audience cope with difficulties in life that resist being coped with in other ways.
In other words, today I encountered a true, modern-day mythmaker.
Charlie Brown: some things you bring on yourself. Other things, you don't.
The disaster in Haiti is huge, unimaginable. All day long on Facebook my friends reported snippets of information from the island from brothers and sisters in the Episcopal Church whom they know and support. Many offered prayers.
One person wondered why God would allow such a thing to happen to a nation that seems constantly in suffering. You'd think that God would give them a breather, he said in effect. Someone else said, "I don't have all the answers to that."
True. As long as people believe in a loving God, they will never be able to explain the presence of suffering in the world. The situation can be discussed, but it's pretty incomprehensible.
But there are people who try to explain. Such as the TV preacher Pat Robertson, who argues here that the reason the Haitians suffer so much is because they "swore a pact with the devil" and as a result are "cursed."
It's a great story pattern. Sell your soul to the devil, reap the consequences. This is so widespread, it even has its own number in the famous folk tale story-pattern catalog by Aarne and Thompson.
It has been very popular for a long time to claim that suffering is a punishment meted out for sins, often of one's ancestors: "The sour grapes eaten by the fathers set the sons' teeth on edge." Countless cultures swear by it. It is even somewhat logical: if you engage in dangerous and/or destructive behavior, there can be consequences, not only for yourself but for those near you, even your family.
But just because something happens to you doesn't mean you caused it because you or someone else sinned.
I was reminded of the scripture (Luke 13:4) where Jesus denies that certain people in Jerusalem lost their lives in a natural disaster-- the collapse of a tower-- because they were sinners.
Similarly, in the Gospel of John (9:2), some people ask why a man is blind-- is it because of his sin, or that of his parents? Neither, Jesus said. He was made blind so that when he was healed the "work of God" could be displayed in his life.
There is stuff that you do that makes it likely you will suffer. And then there is stuff that is out of your control. The earthquake in Haiti was out of Haitians' control.
Do you remember that Peanuts comic about Linus getting a "sliver" in his finger? I call it a splinter. But he was beside himself because someone was going to have to take it out with a tweezers, and it was going to hurt. Lucy came up to him and said he'd gotten the splinter because he had done some bad thing, and now he was going to have to suffer for it.
Then the splinter just popped out on its own. Lucy's world-view was invalidated. Linus says, "Thus endeth the theological lesson for today." Thus endeth Lucy's mythological construct.
And by the way, if you feel so moved-- there's a way to donate to Haitian relief in the top right-hand corner of this blog.
iM SORRY to hear that.. really i can only offer my prayers.
Posted by: masters degree online | January 23, 2010 at 11:20 AM