Iconoclasts

So this wasn’t the planned post for this week, but in light of recent events I thought this might be appropriate. Above, we see United States citizens in Durham, North Carolina pulling down a Confederate statue on Monday, August 14, 2017. This action came as a response (in part at least) to the violence that occurred on Saturday, August 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia where white nationalists and those opposed to white nationalism clashed over the decision by the Charlottesville city council to remove Charlottesville’s statue of Robert E. Lee.

The protesters who toppled the statue in Durham, North Carolina sent a message that icons glorifying the Confederate cause would no longer be tolerated in their city. For many, tearing down these icons is counted as a great victory. And for others, of course, it’s counted as a loss. All across the country, conversations about our nation’s Confederate monuments have been rekindled. (Initial talks occurred after the murders of nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, during a prayer service by a white supremacist on June 17, 2015).

I was listening to WEAA 88.9 FM’s First Edition (a Baltimore based news and politics program) on August 14 and they were talking about what should be done with the Confederate statues here in Baltimore. Many callers said the statues should be taken down. But there were others who offered caution. They warned that we could risk whitewashing our history if we simply remove these offensive symbols as if they never were. (I personally believe context should be presented around them, but that’s not the point of this post… also on the night of August 15, Mayor Catherine Pugh had the statues removed anyway, though they are still deciding what they will do with them now).

Speaking to the image above, pulling down symbols of racism and oppression may certainly feel good. But there is another danger besides just whitewashing history that presents itself. There is the danger of believing that because we smash icons we are opposed to, that we are victorious over the things that they represent.

There is an undeniable allure to taking part in taking apart something that represents racism and oppression. I mean, even though I think context should be presented around the statues, if someone offered me wrecking gear, I’d get involved in the work of aggressive deconstruction. But this action alone could not equal “mission accomplished”. And this is where I really wanted to go with this post. Sorry it took so long, but context is vital.

In his song “It’s Not Working (The Truth)” from the album Crooked, poet, spoken word artist, and rapper Propaganda takes on the voice of God addressing an iconoclast:

Let me tell you what you ain’t try

You ain’t try taking into consideration

That even if change came, you’d still be the same Jason

Lame Jason, still struggling with patience

And collecting objects and projects and protests, you ain’t try

…

It’s a frightening indictment

That even if all these world problems are solved

It still wouldn’t resolve what you are actually looking for

And it’s not like these problems, they don’t need to be addressed

But fixing systemic issues, it ain’t the source of your rest

Or satisfaction, and I know it’s your life’s work

But the work of a man’s hands, it has never quenched his thirst

….

Iconoclasts may feel that, because they have the power to destroy the icon of something they are opposed to and they do so, that their actions are approved by the Divine. Righteous anger. We may think that exercising more anger makes us more Godly. This is dangerous thinking, especially for the Christ follower.

In A Canticle for Leibowitz (one of my favorite books), author Walter Miller Jr. narrates:

“But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.”

I have posted a story below titled Iconoclast, that I wrote many years ago. During its creation, I thought that the presentations of God in the Old Testament held equal weight with the presentations of God through Jesus Christ in the New Testament. I think I had read John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” and John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.” and verses like them, and just kept on reading unchanged. But in later years I was drawn back to those verses and to the life of Jesus Christ. He did not take a power-over position when he came to save us. He did not use a hammer or a sword. He took on the weight of a cross for those who were killing him. And he is the most accurate representation of God to man.

If we believe that just because we bring down the other guy’s statues that we are winning, then we are not seeing the bigger picture. From a non Christian perspective, having power over ones’ enemies is a logical desire, but the love of God as presented through Jesus Christ is absolutely illogical.

Pray for those who mourn over the breaking of these Confederate symbols. Pray and do not gloat. Be mindful of the brokenness of the past and the present, and of the love of Christ for all. And rejoice in hope that transcends the destroying of icons. I was listening to CSPAN radio the other day and they interviewed the founder of Life After Hate, an organization that works to free those who subscribe to hatred from their extremist views. Victory for the Christ follower is not the breaking of symbols of hatred, but the breaking of the idolatry of hatred in the heart.

If you’re interested, below is the story Iconoclast. It takes place in fantasy setting. Forgive its immaturity. I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture in those days.

Reflection: Iconoclasts

By John Dorsey Jr.

When I was in the temple of Sheles worshipping, with the most devastating of voices lifted, and filling the empty space around me, felling my very senses and tearing into the very essence of my soul, I did not see it.

When we formed the earth that they had gathered, refined and reformed it into the image of our once-god with her formless and free essence, like the sight of sound itself, and we moved these formations into Sheles’ immaculate strong house, her divine temple formed by mortal hands… I did not see it.

The architecture, the beauty of the statues, the precious jewels and materials, images and icons… they connected with something inside of me, they helped me see the graces of the gods, the awe that they could inspire. But… I did not see it, did not see this, until after I saw him, until I saw his followers.

This scion of theirs, this prophet of theirs…

The gods -or “the God” as he professes- must have put something mighty, mighty powerful into him. When the creators, the divine assembled him within whatever forge or furnace was blessed, and/or cursed, with the opportunity, the divine opportunity to be his mother -even before they assembled him- when they fueled his poppa’s sperm with fire, and laced his mother’s eggs with steel and iron, and later, when they sculpted his small little heart within her belly into a tool, the greatest of cleavers, of the finest of metals and minerals, into the greatest of shield, banner and sword, they were putting that mighty, powerful something into him, putting it around him.

He was forged and sculpted then, and as he grew. And as he grew he received the wills of the gods… or this “God”; ethereal fire warming, not burning him, as he was loosened, being readied by it.

His, is of the purest and most zealous stuff… Purity, made evident by the relative minimalism of doctrine. Zeal, made evident by my, by our current state.

He did not shape the gods… or “the God” as he claims, into the image that he desired the divine to be… No, this man was clay… no, not clay, he was in fact diamond in the hands of the divine. By the combination of his submission, and the warming by that divine flame, he was sculpted as if soft, wet clay, with the greatest of ease…

Or so I would gather from what I’ve seen since I saw… even, before that, even.

He is their hammer, “His” hammer, as he professes.

And hammers…

I finally saw it, finally see it is true, and I see why.

We were taken away in chains. We fought, many fell. We were neither the first nor the last. Some taken were put to the sword, offered to their god… to his God.

Our finery and wealth and goods, they were destroyed too or left behind. In their destruction he said that, these things we had made were ultimately devoted and dedicated to his god… His God.

And when he had us “dedicate” our statues and temples themselves to his god… or God, I could see why they, or He, send men like Josiah, touch men like Josiah, ignite his poppa’s mortal sperm and form his mother’s mortal belly to contain him with space enough for that cleaver of a heart… why they… or He, stoked the fire, fed it coals in her womb… why they… why He forged that hammer.

And us, our hammers fall upon the earth that we have formed and reformed into the faceless and formless images of Sheles our once-god… I should correct, of my once-god, Sheles (Conversion, is not optional under Josiah’s eye but we, the servants, instruments, fans and foes of the gods do speak with lips that can and do deceive for self-preservation.).

The chains around our ankles, they chatter softly, quietly between each other. They unite us in our victim hood… in our blindness, in seeing the gods as only things to be worshipped, in seeing them as implacable beings with no smudge, spot or blemish, with little want or concern more than to hear from us and to receive from us…

But that is not what the gods concern themselves with. They blind us with that, distract us with that, and we take the bait, and are left with whispering, restraining chains linked together a mile long on the horizon.

Our hammers drop upon the pieces of the home of my once-god. They smash against her faceless countenance. The columns are smitten.

When the men of Josiah, of his God lay these things before us, I believe it is impossible. Solid slabs of mineral seamlessly merged, flawlessly united and melded together… implacable… whole… blessed by the divine… To destroy them? Impossible.

When the first hammer falls… it looks futile… but I, I raise my hammer just as everyone else does, heft the sledge up and back over my head, around… and down.

My body is taken by the impact, shaken. The slab is unaffected. Discouragement.

But, Josiah’s eyes are on us… his whip may soon crack…

So we hoist them again and they fall again, and again we raise them and again pull them from the sky above our heads and as the sweat drop rolls across my temple, imperfection and fracture crawl into this temple’s once-foundation… and as I see shards of tiny rock leap to freedom from the slab of stone of the prisoner on my left, I see the foundation of the gods within my mind fracture as well.

We, mere men, take forged and hammered earth to that which should be divine and divinely insoluble… and we splinter it.

Hammers fall to the corners and greater fraction creeps in to the whole. We force fissure. Bigger and bigger pieces fall away, we scatter them and shatter her faceless countenance to the wind and to the dirt that we tread over and piss upon.

The architecture is no longer something that inspires awe or adulation. The chains, they chitter and chatter indefatigably with our every move, but the hammers along the line speak rarely, in grunts and thuds… and the hammers, in their sparse and direct dialogue, they unite us, not in captivity, but in strength.

The chains unendingly remind us of our submission to my once-god and to the reverence there directed.

The hammers… they starkly, harshly, sharply shout of independence, of power, the power and strength and potential of us, of mankind -we mortal fiefs- to smash their temples and to disfigure their figureless faces.

This is why he was sent, this Josiah, not because we are just clarions to call to the god, but because we are also hammers that turn blessed marble to banal dust.

They send men like him, some send men like him, One sends him, because it is seen, the potential within us is seen, the potential to wreck the world, the worlds. Ours and theirs.

This… this chain gang smashing concrete and granite and marble with sledges in hand… is why they fear us… and fear us they do….

This is how I hear the gods now, in falling hammers and rising debris and the fallout when mankind applies the logic that one being with one big hammer can mangle and smash a god’s faceless form.

I’ve finally heard their fear… it rattles softly like chains now round my ankles…

We… (he continues and I begin) to speak with sledge in hand, of my respect for the God that brought me here, and the God that fuels men like Josiah with strength to become more… to become big enough to remind the other gods, those other gods and once-gods… that we too are worthy to be feared, respected.

Josiah, the cleaver of God has shown me, his prisoner this. There must be something greater to his God after all.