This last weekend, for a course on Eastern Religions, we visited an Hindu celebration of Shiva, and as I continue to unpack my thoughts, I thought it would be a good idea to sort of get them out on paper (or rather, screen). So, without further ado, my reactions:
First, what utter, complete, and absolute hopelessness. Theoretically, it would seem more logical that an true atheism would be the most hopeless existence possible, and that still may be. However, I've experienced that form of hopelessness, (which is often ironically accompanied by the rather european notion of grinning and bearing it),and what I experienced last Sunday was something else entirely. The denial of the existence of anything divine, while despairing, does not compare to the the absolute terror at a god who does not desire to know his followers, but instead demands blind obedience, fealty, offerings, in order not to destroy them. This is made even more apparently sickening in contrast to the living, true God I know in Yahweh--who desires to know His people intimately.
Second, I felt both anger and sadness. I think I finally understand on some level what Yahweh must feel when He sees Israel's perversion and harlotry to other gods. We don't really like to think about idol worship in its more "primitive" sense as being an actual issue in today's age of reason, but watching a priest chant in Sanskrit for two hours while throwing flower pedals and offering food to a hunk of metal threw that presuppopsition out the window. It hurt terribly to see people bow in homage to a non-living object that somehow, supposedly, has the power to help or save them in some way. Ezekiel 16 took on more meaning to me now, is all I can say.
Third, I'm not one to feel spiritual warfare everywhere, and most of you who know me know this-- if there's one thing I am, it's critical of many of the charismatic tenents. However, I felt darkness there. I felt a real, heavy, enervating darkness that I can only assume was spiritual oppression. I am a proponent of the idea that the gods and idols we worship have actual spiritual beings attached to them (call them what you will, demons, etc), and if ever I felt such a presence, I felt it there.
Wrapping up: As an experience, it was not something that was good by any means, but I think the fact that I experienced it was good. It's taken me two days to recover from it, and even so I'm still processing everything (eg, the fact that I am writing this). However, it has done a couple of things for me spiritually. It has helped me to understand how evil idolatry (whether of little humps of wood/stone/metal, or the things in our lives that we put before Yahweh) really is, and I've experienced both the anger at the sheer wrongness of it that I'm sure Yahweh must feel, as well as the overwhelming heartbreak for the people that grow up in that darkness. It also reinforces to me how good my God is, both in that He loves me and wants to have a relationship with me on a personal level, and also in that He has overcome the powers of this world on my behalf, to save me despite the fact that I in no way deserved it. The verse that kept me going through the "ceremony" was 1 John 4:4 "Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world..."
So there you have it. Just thought I'd share that with the 2 or so of you that actually continue to read my thoughts and drolleries.
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