Springtime For Lucifer

Springtime For Lucifer

A Sermon to Countryside Church, Unitarian Universalist

September 1, 2024, Labor Day Sunday

The Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

The past two times I have been in this pulpit I’ve chosen to speak about New Testament scholarship. Today, having previously concerned myself with heavenly matters, I decided to give “equal time” to the opposition.

My sermon today, “Springtime for Lucifer.”

Of course, I am pulling your leg. My topic does not concern the biblical or mythological Lucifer. Instead I am focusing on only one point in a big book called The Lucifer Principle, written by historian and free-thinker Howard Bloom. Bloom is an interesting guy. He’s an academic who never pulls his punches to the point where his critique of Islam has gotten him sentenced to death in seventeen Islamic countries.

The Lucifer Principle

Lucifer is the Latin word for “light-bringer” or “morning star.” It shows up very early translations of the Biblical Book of Isaiah, although most scholars think that is a mistranslation.

The idea is that Lucifer was a fallen angel cast out of Heaven after an unsuccessful rebellion against God. The name became a synonym for the devil, or Satan, due to a passage in the Gospel of Luke where Satan is described as also fallen from Heaven.

But none of this is my focus this morning. My focus is on something else.

The Lucifer Principle is the idea that everything has an alternative  (and often darker) side, but we typically overlook it because that’s easier.

Progress is often the result of things we would rather overlook, because they make us feel uncomfortable if we notice them.

The Lucifer Principle asks us to “give the devil his due.” Because while it is easier to tell ourselves stories that make us feel good. That is intellectually and spiritually lazy.

We will always be better off if we look at the whole picture and consider that things are not always what they seem.

Let me give you some examples.

Technology

Consider that almost everyone in this room has a smartphone. You also likely have a computer of tablet at home.

At the heart of all of the devices, that are central to modern technology, is the Integrated Circuit - often called the computer chip. They are everywhere and in everything.

Why was the computer chip invented? Was it the product of an enlightened scientist trying to make the world better for everyone? Nope. They were developed by MIT in the 1960s as part of the Apollo Project - the push to have America be the first nation to go to the moon.

The Apollo Project existed because the Cold War existed. American was in a race to the moon because Presidents Kennedy and Nixon wanted American to get there first, in order to show the world that America was better then the Soviet Union. It was done for political propaganda.

As scientist James Lovelock would remark, “If it hadn’t been for the Cold War, neither Russia nor American would have been sending people into space.”

That’s why the early moon missions were largely stripped of scientific equipment. The astronauts brought back some rocks, but the heavy-duty scientific instruments were left at home. Apollo wasn’t about science, it was about showing the “Communists” up.

That is why you have a smartphone in your pocket today. The origin of the computer chip is in politics, propaganda and war. America needed to show the world our “know how” was better than the Russians.

As a later President, Ronald Reagan, said, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.” That’s why you have a smartphone.

The Lucifer Principle is the idea that everything has a alternative  (and often darker) side, but we typically overlook it because that’s easier.

Video

A lot of us get our entertainment today by streaming shows and movies over the internet - Netflix, YouTube, etc.

The ancestor to our ability to show movies in our home was the Video Cassette Recorder (or VCR). Remember those? Probably all of the older members here today had one of these big boxes in their home at some point - and there was Blockbuster video store on every corner. The VCR allowed us to buy or rent movies on magnetic tape that we could watch at home.

Well, the VCR, was invented by a company named Apex in 1956, but the machine was the size of desk and cost about $500K in today’s currency. Almost no one had one.

Then Sony and Philips found a way to make VCRs smaller. Still, they were believed a “niche product” that only a few people would want, as the machines were expensive and not in mass production.

But then something happened in the 1970s to spark consumer demand. Suddenly a lot of people wanted these devices. Production was ramped up and prices fell.

What happened? According to most technical historians, it was the sexual revolution. It was the idea that moral behavior had changed, and previously frowned upon stuff was okay. People wanted to be able to view a certain type of movie in their homes. The result was that the VCR market exploded.

This got us all hooked on the idea of watching entertainment in our homes on or own schedule.Then came DVDs and now streaming. Even if your viewing habits are pure vanilla, it still has its beginning in the widespread social desire to indulge other interests. This is where your streaming video came from.

The Lucifer Principle is the idea that everything has a alternative  (and often darker) side, but we typically overlook it because that’s easier.

Medicine

I am a medical hypnotist, which means I help people use the power of their minds to cope with physical and emotional problems. No one has more respect for modern medicine than I do, and I am proud to be part it.

Don’t get me wrong. I have respect for Traditional Chinese Medicine and for the Ayurvedic Medicine from India and other modalities. I think they have a place. Further, I think there are problems with contemporary medicine.

But all that said, what traditional medical systems like Homeopathy, Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda accomplish, doesn’t hold a candle to what Western Medicine routinely accomplishes with imaging, surgery, medicines, chemo, radio and immune therapy.

What is it that has made Western medicine so much more effective than folk remedies or less-scientifically oriented philosophies? Was this progress fueled by deep contemplation and enlightened exploration? No. It was fueled by grave-robbing.

The thing that sets Western Medicine apart from other medical systems is a relentless quest to understand how the human body actually works.

That was new. In ancient times physicians worked with theories about how the human body functioned, but they never explored an actual body.

In ancient China people used to tell the physician what hurt by pointing to a part on an ivory doll where the acupuncture meridians were engraved. The physician never examined one’s actual body.

In Ancient Greece when the philosopher Aristotle wrote his book on medicine, called The History of Animals. He reported that men have more teeth than women. He thought this because he believed teeth were related to wisdom (that’s why we call some teeth Wisdom teeth to this day), and as he believed men were wiser the women, it would follow they would have more teeth. He published that.

This was an error the twice-married Aristotle could presumably have avoided by asking the current Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth. But he didn’t do that. None of them ever did that. Ancient Medicine around the world didn’t look at actual bodies.

True, in ancient Egypt the embalmers worked with bodies, but they were a secret guild and had no contact with the physicians. The Romans did some things with minor surgery and herbs, but had no idea how the body actually worked. They thought illness was because of a disbalance in the body “humors,” substances called Yellow and Black Bile, Blood and Phlegm, that are actually completely unimportant

Western Medicine was unique. Every aspiring doctor learned anatomy first hand by dissecting a human body. They realized that enabled rapid process made over ancient times. Every doctor knew it which is why such disection is a standard practice today. Attending to actual anatomy was the defining characteristic.

However, at a time before refrigeration, and at a time where the church taught that unless your body was buried whole you might not arise when Jesus came, the medical schools needed a steady supply of cadavers they could not get legally.

Consequently a lively trade in bodies developed, lead by people who called themselves “Resurrectionists,” and whom we call “grave-robbers” today.

So common was this practice that people began too build stone mausoleums in cemeteries to hold the remains of their loved ones. That’s why when you look at such structures today you will see they have stout iron doors with elaborate locks and windows covered with metal bars. Less prosperous people were sometimes buried in metal cages that you can still find sticking above ground in older cemeteries. These things were there to stop the Restrictionists.

The success of scientific modern medicine (something all of us rely on) comes from its commitment to study actual human anatomy. But that success was fueled by the patronage of the illegal and horrible practice of grave-robbing.

The Lucifer Principle is the idea that everything has a alternative  (and often darker) side, but we typically overlook it because that’s easier. Giving the “devil his due” and remembering that things are not always what they seem, requires more intellectual work.

Emotions Can Be Dangerous

In over the forty-six years of pastoral ministry I have come to believe that there is an emotional state that carries a danger for everyone. That emotional state is self-righteousness. It results from believing that you are better than you are.

That’s easy to do. Most of us would like to believe it. I am reminded of Garrison Keillor’s Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon, from his radio show Prairie Home Companion, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” We all want to think we’re pretty good. Psychologists call this the “self-enhancement” illusion.

Everyone believes they are correct in what they believe. Everyone believes they are right. No one gets up in the morning and says, “I was wrong yesterday and by the Grace of God I’ll be wrong again today.”

Self-Righteousness happens when you forget that you could be mistaken. You do it because it’s easier. The difference between a healthy-minded confidence and an unhealthy self-righteousness is when you lose that perspective. The Lucifer Principle shows us that people tend to think ideas that are easy. Ideas that make one feel good. No one wants to consider that there might be an alternative side. That’s work.

No matter how convinced you are about something, there is always the possibility that there could be more going on than you realize. As we’ve seen with my little history lesson about technology, video and medicine, things are not always what they seem. In the grip of a “self-enhancement” illusion we can forget that and it encourages self-righteous thinking.

Othering

Why do we let ourselves feel self-righteous? Religion has been notorious for this. In theology there is a long-standing problem, which theologians call the Problem of Evil, or more formally the problem of Theodicy.

Simply, if God is all good, why do bad things exist? If there is an all powerful God out there, how come bad things happen? There have been many answers attempted

My favorite humorous attempt is by Comedian Woody Allen who takes this up in his book Without Feathers by proposing that maybe God is sort of an underachiever. You know, he means well but can’t quite get it together.

A much more serious treatment is found in the 1981 book When Bad Things Happen To Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner. But this is an ancient debate which has been going on for as long as philosophy has existed.

One way to solve the problem about why bad things happen is to blame bad things on something else. Like a bad spiritual power.

This is the solution posed by most traditional religions groups - including the groups who meet in huge sanctuaries not far from us this morning. There is a Christian Lucifer, a Jewish Satan, a Buddhist Mara, an Islamic Iblis and many others. Bad things happen and there is someone to blame - a dark power actively working against the good. This is an easy answer to propose because it’s simple to blame something else.

Religious groups do this to other religious groups all the time. Politicians do it to each other. Racial groups do the same - White European culture uses the words “dark” and “black” to imply something bad. Other racial groups return the favor with other words. Just look at our national political landscape and you will see the same thing. Finger-pointing everywhere.

The easiest way to deal with something you don’t like is to point the finger of blame. We all have a part that wants to do this as a default. We can find ourselves blaming others as a reflex.

Even St. Paul in the New Testament Book of Romans says with exasperation “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Rom 17:19). He was in a situation where he knew better, but the part of him that wanted an easy excuse took over, and he said and did things he did not really want to say or do. It is so easy to do that.

The Eleventh Commandment

My wife, the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Bates, used to tell her congregation of forty years that she had an Eleventh Commandment. “Thou Shalt Not Other.” You should not blame other people for problems. It may make you feel better, but that’s not how you solve problems.

You solve problems by “giving the devil his due” and remember that things are often more nuanced and complex than they seem. Blaming others for what you don’t like is tempting. But it is lazy. Reality is always healthier than fantasy.

Politics

I don’t know about you but I’m not looking forward to the national election we are going to have in a couple of months. My concern is the amount of anger and vitriol I see out there in society. Because my work in cancer-care cuts across every political and socio-economic divide, I have clients of every political belief and lifestyle circumstance. So I hear it all.

Sometimes I get scared at the anger people in one political camp have toward people in another.

It’s gotten so bad that I began to joke that my hope is that I will be abducted by aliens prior to November.

At first people laughed. Now I have a list of people who would like me to pick them up along the way if that happens. (BTW, the list is full, so I will not be passing a clipboard around at coffee hour in case any of you were hoping.)

The fuel for this social problem is that people have become self-righteous. They believe their side is completely right and the other side is completely wrong. It leads people to talk past each other and nothing ever gets settled. This is why we hear talk of political violence and threats of civil war.

I am deeply concerned for the future of our nation and I have seen first-hand families divided over issues.

I’ve seen self-righteousness destroy businesses, corporations, church congregations and more. We have to get past this kind of thinking if we are ever to co-exist.

I used to make this mistake. I assumed my progressive ideas were correct and only dumb or bad people would disagree. I’ve had to learn that people on the other side of a political or philosophical divide are not bad or dumb. They are simply attending to different aspects of the situation than those I perceive. They may fall for an easy answer and not consider the situation holistically. But then I was often doing the same when I dismissed them.

Once upon a time I was a chef. The best restaurant I ever worked at was the one where the owner believed that a happy kitchen was a productive kitchen. “Therefore,” he said, “I’m making it part of your job to put up with some kinds of people. You have put up with them, and they have put up with you. Because that’s part of your job.” That’s a job we all have.

Give The Devil His Due

Obviously, there are some things about which we can always be sure. Abuse is always wrong. Oppression is always wrong. Hate is always wrong. Nor is that an exhaustive list.

But for most things a difference of opinion is not a bad thing. If you actually talk to people who may disagree with you profoundly, you may discover another aspect of the issue that you had not considered.

It’s hard. Like everyone else I think what I believe is correct. It takes fortitude to hear the other person out. When I try to do it I find myself biting my tongue and clenching my fists. White it’s painful to admit, sometimes the other person does have a fair point and feels as they do because there is a side to the issue that I didn’t consider. Everything has a alternative side, that we typically overlook, because that’s easier.

My very first parish ministry was a rural congregation at the tip of Long Island - The First Universalist Church of Southold. It was an old congregation founded by farmers. It had its heyday during the popularity of Spiritualism in the nineteenth century, and there were seances in the parsonage. During the McCarthy era they worried about Soviet spies, and during Prohibition it was said there was a still running on church properly. Every political belief you could imagine was represented, including some extreme even by today’s standards.

It was a point of pride in that congregation that all the members could find a way to co-exist - and had done so for more than a hundred years. It wasn’t always easy, but they pulled it off. They found ways to disagree, sometimes profoundly, while staying connected.

Let me suggest that the Lucifer Principle is helpful here. The idea is that everything has a alternative side, that we typically overlook, because that’s easier.

We are living in a tense and unsettled time. If we are to get through this well - with our friends, our families, or co-workers - we will need to remember that it is part of our job to put up with some kinds of people. And they need to put up with us. There will need to be a Springtime for Lucifer, or at least the Lucifer Principle. Otherwise, we may become self-righteous, and only pain will come of that.

The Lucifer Principle reminds us that we need to be willing to do what is not easy - remember that things are often complicated and there is usually another aspect that we tend to overlook. I hope we will manage it.

And that’s my sermon.