Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're The Same Face! Doesn't Anybody Notice This?

I only just realized on a car ride north this past Saturday how a statement, a statement I was going to address to make the point that as a Christian I find Christian metaphysics an odd sell, may be true. I was going to point and say, "See how silly," but now I don't know. Of course I am ahead of myself and, you dear reader, I've left at the station.

Let's start at the beginning, and when I come to the end, I'll stop.

So I have the good fortune of sorting through gifted books to see which should be saved and which should be sold or gifted farther down the library food chain. Oh, right- I'm library faculty now. So, I'm sorting through books and as I do so, I encounter an insurmountable problem: we exist as we do. Since we exist in time and space and books are actually made of matter, I find it difficult to make the cuts that must be made. I suppose in a perfect world, in which we and other things did not have mass and take up space, I could save all the books there were, but two roads diverged in a yellowed wood and all that, so we save what we can and pass along the others.

Just to be clear, I know the things that we say should be saved. John Calvin could've smeared feces on vellum, called it theology and we'd save it. But there are other more difficult or less obvious calls to make. I suppose that's where I come in with my particular "expertise". Perhaps it's more fair to say my particular familiarity. In any case, that's not a tough call either. But then there are the texts that seem like an obvious throw away, but to me should be saved. Texts like Jesus Taught Me to Cast Out Devils by Norvel Hayes or 101 Questions and Answers on Demon Powers by Lester Sumrall, the latter containing this gem:

"It could be possible that the headquarters of the devil is on the moon. There is no scripture to substantiate this theory, but we do know that the moon has a tremendous effect upon our earth. If someone goes crazy, he is called a lunatic, meaning 'moon struck'. Medical science has stated that patients in mental hospitals become very unstable during certain phases of the moon; they may be normal for 28 days, then suddenly become stark raving mad. This is an area for further study."

Clearly, in a finite space (the library space) some things can be saved and some things must be passed over. And this will be passed over. I could probably make the case that our library has a particular interest in the Devil's on the Moon text because Lester Sumrall was loosely connected with Theodore Engstrom who was one of our university board chairs and part of the whole mid-century Holiness stew that dotted the cultural landscape with radio hours, tracts, bible colleges, publishing houses, and political movements. There is, in fact, a straight and direct "spiritual path" from Lester Sumrall to John McCain. I say that to neither impugn nor lift up John McCain, only to point out that this is not some crazy, out of left field, claim. It may be crazy, but it is mainstream crazy. It is as mainstream crazy as Billy Graham positing that heaven is a physical place located in/at the North Star.*

These books must be saved, but they won't be. Of course there's a kitschy value, there is a loose denominational interest, it's a collection of someone's thoughts and ambitions manifested in the prioritization and arrangement of physical resources into a book- for these reasons I think they are, like any book, worth saving. They are artifacts.

But I also think it ought to be saved for the sake of our being saved. These books, like so many tracts, pamphlets, sermons, regionally published studies, Sunday School lessons, passion play programs, crusade literature etc.. will be lost. And it is in those materials where crazy hides. When we dispose of these artifacts we develop the ability to suppress the story they tell. We can escape the actual presence of these books that influences day to day Christianity. We are able to deny they have ever had a role in shaping our religious commitments or, more importantly, our condemnations. We can say we've never been crazy, we've always been on the side of good, we're nothing if not right and by right we mean whatever is winning right now. So when I say they ought to be saved for the sake of our being saved, I mean that they should remain as a reminder of our folly and arrogance and a reminder that the saving work of God is not done for the sake of getting our stories straight. Unless of course Christian salvation is a matter of assent to a properly constructed and expressed proposition, in which case I will take this all back.

I'll make it plain. It is the purview of religious people to spout crazy. It's what we do. She's a witch, burn her. "As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten..." so women can't be priests. I'm not saying crazy because it may turn out to be a mistaken claim (which, technically it isn't because it's not the kind of thing about which you can be mistaken). It's crazy because it's rooted in... well nothing. Nothing more than personal commitments anyway. Which is something- in fact it's something much more than nothing. Those personal commitments are what make your life worth living. If your life is worth living. But because the claims are crazy, very little can be claimed, though the claim always remains as the basis for how we live. And when I write "we" I mean "we" not just "one". As in, it is the basis for how we live, not for how one lives. And that's why I wrote an odd "sell" up above. It's a strange bit as it is, but even stranger to try to convince someone else outside of your "we" to go for it. But that's what we do and the whole of Western Christian history, let alone all human history, shows that we'll say and do just about anything.

That's the thing with metaphysics- you can say whatever you want, and who's going to tell you you're crazy? I mean other than me, who is going to tell you you're crazy? Well, also, I mean other than another group's armed adherents who come and throw you out of a second story window because they reject your metaphysical claims- who's going to tell you you're crazy? Or, I mean other than the authorities that will burn you at the stake for articulating the wrong things- who's going to say anything?

But maybe not.

Like I said. This car ride saturday may have me change my tune. When I shared with others the line that the devil's headquarters is on the moon, I quickly remembered that Gil Scott-Heron said Whitey is on the moon and suddenly the possibility of a clear singular vision came to mind. I don't have it yet, but I may only be able to be so dismissive of metaphysics for a little longer.

I Always Thought it Was the Smith's That Took Me Back
Nothing's Shocking- Jane's Addiction

* See Edward Fiske in the June 8, 1969, New York Times if'n you're all up in my face about not including references. He said it. Rationalize it and move on.