The eCrozier

The 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, tells a wonderful, comic story of Kalahari tribesmen. They live content knowing that the gods, while watching their every move, are appeased. This must be true because the tribe is living well in contented happiness. But then one of the Bushmen finds a bottle that fell from an airplane landing unbroken in the Kalahari. This bottle introduces new knowledge into the tribe. At first they see this bottle as a gift from the gods, but it soon produces dissension in the tribe as various people fight over its possession. Their fear of the gods and their desire to keep the gods appeased turns into a realization that truly “the gods must be crazy.”

We modern people view this film and laugh at the tribesmen’s simplicity and naïveté. But truth be told, our Jewish & Christian ancestors had similar views about appeasing a God who they perceived as angry and often fickle. Jesus more than once was asked: “Who sinned this man or his parents that he is suffering so,” implying that God was always just watching and waiting to lower the boom on someone. The not-so-ancient practice of indulgences was a way of buying off and appeasing the wrath of a God who watched with anger and needed satisfaction (hard currency accepted and appreciated).

But we modern people aren’t nearly as sophisticated and evolved as we’d like to think we are. We’ve simply replaced an all-watching god who must be appeased and satisfied with an all-watching state that also must be appeased and satisfied. Just as the gods of the Kalahari tribe kept them safe and secure as long as they were appeased and satisfied, we now are willing to do the same as long as the state promises us safety and security, even if the state fulfills that promise by means we really don’t want to know much about.

To wit: We’re passively endorsing drone strikes. As my good friend Paul Zahl has written: “Our use of drones gives these people no chance to surrender. It is like capital punishment without an arrest, a charge, a trial, or a right of appeal. Our use of drones is not humane.” But the gods of the state have promised us safety and security if we just let them use drones to assassinate anyone who just might be a threat to us. We’re also passively endorsing unprecedented invasions of our privacy. The gods of the state and their demigods of corporate America (Verizon, Google, etc.) will take away our safety and security, or so they threaten, if we don’t appease them by allowing them to do this.

We used to fear the Lord God Almighty and believed that God alone held us in the hallow of God’s hand. Now we fear the loss of our safety and security, so we pray to the new gods of the state to protect us. But throughout human history we must know that such safety and security has always been elusive, as St Paul who lost his head to the executioner’s ax and St Peter who was crucified upside down have attested. Like the revelers in Poe’s castellated abbey with welded doors shut, we’re willing to ignore all manner of suffering and death outside just so that we can have a wishful promise of safety and security inside, if it will just stop the Red Death from creeping in.

The gods must be crazy? I think not. We need to look to mortals for that.

+Scott