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In the past week I have struggled with Crowley’s text. It is not that the ideas are impossible or even exceptionally difficult. It’s just that they’re so…so…
I want to write “insane.” But that I can’t fathom the motivations of Apocalyptic Christian Fundamentalist does not qualify them as insane. It doesn’t discount the possibility that they are insane, but that’s another matter. It’s easy to label them as “nutcases” or “crazies” or any number of other pejoratives. It’s easy, because that jives with our experiences and makes sense. To complicate this simple ratio of reasoning allows for the possibility that Apocalypticists are not the nutcases we thought them to be. After all, as we discussed in class, and end point to time allows our brains to cope with simply existing.
To be honest, I really do want to write about the insanity of Apocalyptic Christian Fundamentalists. I do think they’re off their rockers. It’s difficult for me to understand their mindset. I wasn’t raised in a church, my spiritual evolution is my own, and I have a hard time with many of the values espoused by this group, namely intolerance, self-imposed ignorance, and the pursuing of these values on a continual basis. Friday, when I posited the question “what happens if they were actually successful in their quest for the ideology of clarity?,” I was quite serious.
The definition of insanity is often cited as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results (ironically, this quote is continually misattributed to Einstein, Twain, and Benjamin Franklin). The legal definition is a bit clearer: “mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior (link).” My epiphany on Crowley’s work came in the form of a paradox: Apocalyptic Christian Fundamentalists are continually weaving through both complacency and the politics of change. They are, to borrow a phrase from literary theory, always already working to bring about change toward an old vision (in their minds) of what the world should look like while at the same time this vision has not necessarily changed–ever. Apocalypticists are doing the same thing, over and over, and waiting for the Tribulation to either start then end, or to end. Legally, I would be hard pressed to make the label stick–and only on the first qualifier.
Apocalypticists’ vision is flexible only in its adaptation toward incorporating newly encountered ideas into its own ideology, something that we have discussed in class. This can range from the banal to something more dangerous, as Crowley notes how LaHaye and Noebel rewrite history: “This argument [about colonists introducing a Reformation mind-set] revises early American History in interesting ways… More salient, however, is its erasure of the face that neither God nor the Christian Bible is mentioned in the Constitution of the United States” (152). While I have immense concern for the reframing and rewriting of history, the entrance of Apocalypticists into politics scares the bejesus out of me. Their immobile vision of how to shape the world obfuscates other, better options. Crowly writes that “believers must forget that interpretation mediates the text of the Bible and assume instead that God’s word is immediately and correctly grasped by those who receive it. People who don’t read the Bible in accordance with sanctioned readings either have insufficient faith or are so sinful that they cannot see reality clearly” (144). Apocalypticists won’t listen to reason, won’t make unsanctioned interpretive leaps, and cannot objectively evaluate an idea or situation. In other words, their rationalization of everything that challenges their beliefs even in the slightest as just a “test” from God or a trick of Satan stands forever as an affront to rationale thinking and to the cognitive capacities that could just as easily have been provided to them by a higher power. I can’t help but be reminded of this:
This discrepancy reveals another missed opportunity for stasis in the undercurrents of debate between liberalism and Apocalyptic Christian Fundamentalists. And I think it’s a basic reason why liberalists and apocalypticists cannot understand each other–one is a philosophy of progression and reason, the other is a philosophy of reversion to a set standard of values and moral guidelines. The foundational aspects of belief between these two groups are whole incompatible. And we would be insane, at least in the Einsteinian, Twainian, and Franklinian sense, to avoid understanding such an incompatibility. My fear is that, by knowing this, I’ve lost all hope in fighting this good fight.
Anyone else scared?