"Why?" is the Devil's Question

I was chatting with a friend this past week, and I was being immature (as usual) and began asking "Why?" as he was explaining something to me. I really didn't want to know why, but I wanted to test him to see if he knew why. After a couple of times, he said, "Why? is the Devil's question."

I said, "I beg your pardon? Did you just say 'Why? is the Devil's question?'"

He said that he had, and I asked, "Who told you that?"

"My priest," he said bluntly. "Why?" apparently caused Lucifer to rebel against the Most High, and "why?" opens us up to being faithless, according to his priest.

As a Gnostic, I was tempted to correct him, but also as someone who can respect another person's faith if it fulfills them, I let it slide. But the statement has stuck with me since, and it bugs me -- because it is both very wrong and right at the same time.

Initially, I was shocked by the statement. Not asking "why?" helped keep people in submission to a corrupt Church throughout the Middle Ages and led them to keep paying indulgences, even though there is no biblical proof of anyone's ability to purchase a loved ones' salvation. Not asking "why?" led the Church into a destructive acquiescence to the Third Reich in World War II. And in modern times in America, not asking "why?" has opened 13-year-old girls up to disturbing misogynistic, and polygamist marriages to 50+-year-old pedophiles in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).

The question "why?" allows us to use the minds that we've been given. If God is the Creator (which Gnostics don't necessarily believe, but orthodox Christians do), then shouldn't we use the minds He gave us? Or is this a "have faith in the Creator, not the creation" debate?

At the same time, there is a tendency for people to get hung up on asking the question rather than listening for an answer. Their minds and spirits are acting in the same immature way I was with my friend, asking, "Why? Why? Why?" If the spirit and mind are focused only on the question, then the answer may never come. Asking "why?" can become the habit, rather than something more productive, like listening.

The act of falling into a silent state of being is what Centering Prayer, a practice I use, is about. The practitioner sits comfortably with the back straight and their eyes closed. And rather than reciting a sutra or prayer, they just let their minds relax. There is no forcing of the mind to be blank -- if thoughts arise, the practitioner lets the thoughts occur without becoming attached to them. Divine revelation isn't the point either. The point is simply to listen by being silent. If the person finds themselves becoming attached to a thought or emotion, they can simply recite their sacred word (like "Abba" or "Peace" or "Trust") to return their mind to the task at hand.

By falling into silence and not necessarily expecting anything in return for our 20 minutes of time, we break the self-centered habit of always having to have our minds move at a million miles per hour. We're a vain society, and we love to think we're showing our importance by having our minds multi-task. It is so odd to us to think that our eventual evolution may actually involve embracing silence, not talking or texting or fitting as much stuff into our days as possible.

I run into many people who call themselves agnostics (more now than ever before). They don't want to say that they're atheists, because they don't want to shut off the possibility that there is something beyond this mundane existence. But they also don't want to know the answer, if there is one. They're stuck at the stage of asking "why?," and they have no desire to move any further. To go further requires sacrifices that they're unwilling to make (time, effort, ... noise).

To question the existence of a higher power is chic and hip -- it shows, so they think, that they're intelligentsia. They think like Obama thinks -- faith (and guns) are for the desperate. Those are niceties to cling to when all else fails. To ask the question "why?" in pop culture makes you sound really cool and intelligent in conversations, but no one expects the answer to the question ... they don't want it, in fact.

So, in a sense, "Why?" is the Devil's question. But so is not asking it. The Archon can keep you in submission if you follow either path exclusively. His control over the human race is found in the extremes of both choices. Gnosis, on the other hand, is found when you ask the question, and then silence your mind and actually listen for the answer.

Robertson: Mouthpiece of a Blind God

This week, Pat Robertson, televangelist, founder of a several Christian organizations and corporations and host of The 700 Club, stepped back from making specific predictions for the year to make just the general prediction that "chaos was coming." To quote him, "The Lord was saying that there's going to be violence and chaos in the world." Well, duh! That's as sure to happen as saying, "A baby will be born somewhere in the world in the next 5 minutes."

This most recent prediction comes after a few years of miserable failure at being able to predict anything of significance based on his conversations with his Lord. In May of 2006, the year after the devastating Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Robertson said, "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms." Two things should be noted about this prediction: that it came after the national weather service warned that the hurricane season for 2006 could be as bad as 2005's, and that no major hurricanes hit American soil in 2006 or 2007 for that matter.

For 2007, this Lord of his told him that mass killings were coming to America, sometime after September, possibly in the form of a nuclear weapon, even though, according to him, "The Lord didn't say 'nuclear.'" Now, while the worst school shooting in US history occurred at VA Tech in the Spring of 2007, no terrorist attack occurred on US soil at all.

So, after a few years of abissmal failure to get an accurate prediction out of "God," Robertson has made the prediction that "We've just begun to see what's going to happen, and the nations are going to be convulsed with violence." Really? Perhaps you'd also like to predict that gasoline prices will fluctuate as well, Robertson. Or how about, there's a good chance that I'll take the trash out this week? The fact of the matter is that when people try to prove the efficacy of their god by trying to make predictions, more often than not, they end up making fools of themselves.

The "God" of Pat Robertson begins to take on the archonic role ascribed to him in many Gnostic texts, including "The Apocryphon of John" and "On the Origin of the World", which is to say, He becomes Samael (the blind god) or Saklas (the foolish god). This Demiurge (or half-creator), also known as Yaldabaoth, Nebro, and a few other names in the Gnostic texts, was the offspring of Chaos and Sophia, the feminine aspect of God's wisdom. Being blind to his own origins, he foolishly proclaimed, "It is I who am God, and there is no other one that exists apart from me."

This is the god that Robertson follows. The god that demands that the whole world come under his dominion and worship him alone. All other faiths are false. There is only one way to salvation.

Now, I don't want to give you the impression that I think Robertson is a bad man. I truly don't think any of these evangelists are bad people. They've just been a little misled. If their faith brings them closer to the Divine, I support them, just as I support a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Zoroastrian whose faith bring him or her closer to the Divine. But it's when they start saying that their religion is the only religion and they try to force their faith on others, I see the cracks in their armor. A god who demands worship doesn't deserve it, in my opinion.

And obviously, trying to prove the power of your god through public predictions doesn't work either. Isn't it the mainstream Christians who said that many of the noncanonical texts weren't canonical because the "age of public revelation" had ended when they were written? Is it suddenly okay to reopen the age of public revelation? And who gets to decide that?

If you're going to tout your religion as the ultimate religion, at least be consistent about it. Otherwise, do what is best for your religion and focus on bringing hope to a dark world. We can all agree that what we need for 2008 is hope.