Matthew P. Schmidt
My Blog
Christ in the General Population
The Catholic Church has not had a simple history with astrology. From the beginning, even in Judaism, divination has been banned, and so it is today. And yet Christ’s own birth was foretold by a star in the sky. Simon the Magus and demonic prophets are condemned in Acts. Signs in the heavens are referred to multiple times in Revelation. What gives?
One key is that attempting to divine the future through astrology is forbidden. Yet the concept that the stars have some influence on our lives, as a since-debunked scientific principle, it is no better or worse than any other old theory. Thus came a controversial practice of using astrology to determine optimal times for harvesting crops, holding meetings, et cetera. But there was not any supernatural twist to this per se, only a purely physical theory. It would be as if you could hypothetically divine the future with magnets, and then you instead built a compass.
As such, many churches and even cathedrals incorporated zodiac imagery. While these symbols would be eschewed today, I think it’s worth considering one, or a variant of one.
Take this rose window:
Now imagine, beneath it, a Nativity scene.
The tension in Christianity has always been between making Jesus an inhuman God or a mere anointed mortal. But this idea that Jesus descended from Heaven, setting aside all of his glory and authority, and became a human being, subject to all the powers of the world like we are–is this not only exemplified by supposing he would be influenced by the stars as well?
I am not seriously saying that I believe in astrology, nor should you believe, either. But as the mere physical theory discussed earlier, it would be no weirder for Jesus to be affected by Mercury and Taurus than it would be for him to be affected by gravity or magnetism. Indeed, he would be inhuman not to be so. It would show that Jesus is treated no differently than the rest of us, another prisoner suffering the same indignities of the general population in this death’s row’s prison camp we call Earth.
Photo Credit: The Abbey of St. Denis, Paris. By TTaylor — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
What to the Modern White Guy is “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”?
I have always been inspired by the story of Fredrick Douglass, a slave who escaped slavery to become a renowned orator and author. His is not the story of a man who was second-rate, shooed into the spotlight only for his relative accomplishments compared to his past. What use would that be? No, he was not merely any random speaker, but Fredrick Douglass, a name that survives to this day in history books, no matter how often it is skimmed over.
Signal Boost: SINGULARITY SUNRISE!
A shameless plug for someone else.
The Taste for Realism
I have seen, and admittedly indulged in that fan activity I will call the Fact Checking Game. It goes like this: First, you take some work of fiction, particularly a popular one, and you find some fascinating idea or claim it has. Then you deconstruct it with real world logic, checking all the facts and invariably coming up with an unrealistic or at least implausible conclusion. At this point, bemoaning that the creator did not think of this may commence. As a sequel, you can find some plausible counterpoint, and argue with the proponents of the former conclusion until the cows come home.
This is not, in itself, a bad thing.
0 Comments