A quick note, I'm going to try my best to avoid stepping on toes in this one, but it will probably happen as I am speaking about religion, a hot button issue which is also why I will be using it. Most of us have an immediate reaction to the term or idea of religion. A little history about me is that I am a Christian and I have been a missionary, but the circles I run in are not exclusive to those ideas.
Throughout this post, though, it is important to keep in mind truth over perceptions. People will fail us, that is a fact. It is important to keep in mind what is and is not truth, and the argument that truth is subjective is not truth.
I will begin this part by letting everyone step into a brief moment in my daily life. I have a lot of acquaintances, they're friends but people who rarely interact with me, or me with them, beyond Facebook or work. Often enough they toss out little comics or send me an email to make their point and strut their stuff as though the point they made was really just as simple as how the comic makes it sound.
Now, where am i going with all of this? That's simple. One of the aspects of writing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is that it is best to show our audience not tell our audience. It sounds easy, yet tends to be tricky. We want our characters (fictional or non) to simply drop logic bombs by sharing their fast ideas with the rest of humanity and then people will listen. But the catch is that people don't listen unless they respect someone, and chances are they don't respect your character (even nonfiction ones because of how we tend to portray a person). Therefore it's best to create the scenario and let the characters work it out rather than sit around a coffee shop and talk.
Now, take for example the following two comics. I use these because they point-counterpoint and not to illicit a response from anyone or to upset anyone. It's a learning experience.
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| from atheistcartoons.com |
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| from liberallogic101.com |
Okay, so the first comic has an atheist asking the audience to imagine a world without religion and then two of the world's top religions showing intolerance and chasing after him. Cute.
The second comic makes a jab at Catholics but then follows it up with some facts that can be checked...but whether we nitpick or not on the facts presented (and yes I am aware that there are atheist charities out there, but I am unaware of any "anti-christian bigoted" charity groups, and i want to reiterate that I am not trying to incite anyone) there is still an important point to be made about charity, the message we inadvertently send, hypocrisy, and the role of religion.
*Climbs down from small soapbox*
The point is, someone made these comics and is trying to tell us something. The catch is that people who will agree with one of these comics or the other is someone who probably began looking at the comics and already agreed with the ideas within it. Thus, how would we transfer ideas that others may disagree with into a format that would better express our views and not overly simplify the situation.
So, what could we do? We could create a story to address the first comic. A world without religion, what would it look like?
Well some would see a utopia type of life. Socialism walked this path believing in the innate goodness of human kind. Everyone working for the betterment of all without the thundering spirits overhead lashing their whips of flame and damnation. This is certainly a possibility.
Although I personally would not walk that road, and willing to risk any nasty criticism I get (which would ironically support my thesis), I would look at the other extreme. A world without a religious backdrop is one where there is no moral hierarchy, no ability to say what is a universal right and wrong. Death, power struggles, drug addiction, murder, greed to extremes. Things that are often found when we look at history and modern day in places where there is an absence of strong religion and moral struggle. People are good, which would and could create our story, but people are also innately wrought with bad traits. When unchecked by something greater than ourselves (a divine being, the death of the entire human race, or grandma and her rolling pin) humanity tends to devolve into a self indulgent state where people are harmed for other's amusement or prosperity. (hmm, anyone remember Nero? Caligula? The 1970s). And some may scoff, but look at some of the groups with lobbyists that have surfaced who have no real value in furthering human society, debate, research, just themselves (for fun, the medical marijuana groups who ignore the fact that the medicinal properties tend to get destroyed when the plant is introduced to heat).
*steps down from soapbox*
Oh wait...did I just open up the issue of virtues and vices? Isn't that an archetypal concept? YES, my fellow writers. Virtues and Vices are archetypal traits! Oddly enough, many of the famous "Seven Deadly Sins" are repeated throughout other cultures moral frameworks, thus making it archetypal. Just heaven help you if you're writing a blog and trying to find a picture of "vices and virtues". Three pages of Panic at the Disco album covers? I fear for our culture now, I really, really do.
However, I want to quickly point out that hypocrisy is not the issue I'm talking about. I'm also not trying to assault any one's religion or lack there of. I'm merely talking of history, values and memes. I know that there are good people who do not believe in a higher power just as well as i know that there are people who claim to believe in a higher power but one could never tell, and in some religions those who claim to know the higher power but do not display that knowledge in their lives are deemed not of that religion.
Yes, I'm talking in a vague cloud of words because this is always a hot topic and that whole once-bitten-twice-shy thing tends to make my apprehensive.
*climbs off the small soapbox again*
So how do we illustrate these points?
In fact the second comic is sort of a Bible lesson, for those of us who stayed awake in Sunday school it's not surprise. When Jesus had his feet washed by the woman with the perfume, Judas became upset that the money was wasted on the perfume when it could have been used to feed the poor. Well Judas was right wasn't he? Maybe, but the fact that he was rebuked becomes the focus of the point. Judas was upset and over compensating for his own iniquities. We know this because of his reaction. He has been walking with Jesus for a while, and he should have learned that people worship Jesus it is never worthless or useless. The woman could go out now and tell her story. She could share with the world her testimony. She could stand tall when others refused to even get up for fear. Her actions are the focus and her actions are the key.
So what could we do? We could show a world without religion. We could show the world where religion reigned over. Both could be shown as utopias, but only one can also be shown as a distopia. We would need to show the struggles and how those struggles in those societies would or could be overcome.
Now, for those who will make the point that a religious world would be a distopia, too, because people would no longer be free thinkers, I would like to direct your next few readings toward John Milton. Please read the real stuff on him, none of the conjecture about his sexuality or beliefs because, frankly people, we don't know the secrets, but we do know essential facts about the man. Anyone can make up conjecture about a person based on their nicknames or letters they've written. I would hate to see what future historians would say if they knew my nicknames in school or found the letters I had written to many of my friends (male and female).
*Climbs down from the soapbox again*
One fact about Milton was that he struggled with trying to picture a world where God reigned supreme. There is little doubt that the man was a devout follower of God, but he identified the pre-fallen world as "stupidly good". He depicted the struggle in Heaven as a philosophical battle that turned into war while God was absent unable to decide why God was absent, or why God was absent at the fall, except that it was planned. That everything since then was the fire purifying the gold that would decorate the streets of Heaven (symbolism, humans are the gold).
C.S. Lewis struggled much with the same concept and he wrote a companion piece to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress called Pilgrim's Regress. Both stories take readers on a walk through this fractured world to find that perfect place, or find it once again.
Conclusion:
Basically, the point becomes that your job is to show us what you wish us to see and understand. Not tell us. You must create a world that is plausible and demonstrative of what you wish people to perceive. Star Trek lived and died on scientific exploration. Camelot lived and died upon the notion of everyone working together. Paradise was lost when pride became part of the equation.
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