Of This and Other Worlds

Part One, in case you missed it

We do not sin in a vacuum, or for mere sinning's sake, but rather in response to natural human feelings and the pressures of circumstance: hunger, thirst, weariness, frustration, boredom, anger, loneliness, pain, sickness, discouragement, sexual urges, and so on. And when we seek sympathy and understanding from those who might otherwise condemn us, it is on that basis that we make our appeal. "I stole that money because I was hungry." "I hit that man because he made me furious." "I had that affair because I was so lonely." We want other people to understand the feelings that led to our giving in to temptation, to be able to imagine themselves in our place, so that they will be compassionate toward us and show us mercy.

If we think of it that way, then it is unnecessary to believe that Christ had to be capable of actually committing sin in order to sympathize with us. What we really want is to know that He understands how we feel before we give in to sin – that He knows what hunger, thirst, weariness, frustration, boredom, anger, loneliness, pain, sickness, discouragement, and sexual urges feel like because He has personally experienced them.*

Well, in the gospels we do find Christ coming under these kinds of overwhelming pressures, and being demonstrably affected by them. He was not some super-being immune to the frailties and vulnerabilities of humanity, but a true Son of Man. After forty days and nights in the wilderness, Matthew and Luke tell us, He was hungry (perhaps the most colossal understatement in all of Scripture: He must have been nearly dead of starvation). By the well in Samaria after a long day's walk, He was thirsty. After preaching long hours to the crowds in Galilee, He was weary – so weary in fact that He could sleep soundly in a boat tossed by a raging storm. In the temple courts, seeing His Father's house turned into a marketplace, He was consumed with anger. In Gethsemane, He was overwhelmed with loneliness and sorrow almost to the point of death. On Calvary, He experienced horrific physical, emotional and spiritual pain.

And yet, the author of Hebrews assures us, He went through all these ordeals "sin apart". He was tested and tempted in all the ways that make us weak and vulnerable and prone to sin, but He never stepped over the line. Sin found nothing in Him, no claim or hold on His spirit, because He was not only truly Man, but truly God. He never lost sight of the Father, or of the glories of heaven, and so none of the insipid, feeble pleasures of this sin-corrupted world could possibly beguile Him, any more than you or I would be tempted to covet rhinestones if we owned the Koh-I-Noor. All the tests and temptations He endured, potent and real as they were, served merely to demonstrate His incorruptible and divine character. As the same writer of Hebrews noted, "Such a high priest meets our need -- one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."

But because as a Man Christ was tempted, in the sense of going through all the same feelings of need and experiences of hardship that we do, we can cry out to Him in any situation and know that He understands – not only how we feel, but what we need to endure and overcome. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Cor. 10:13)

I am thankful beyond words that whatever I feel, whatever I face, whatever pressures I am under, I have a Saviour who understands. He does not ignore or excuse sin -- rather, He died to save me from it. But He will never treat me unjustly or fail to hear my cries for help, either.

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* Before anybody has hysterics over the implication that Christ was not asexual, I'd like to point out that the sexual impulses were given and blessed by God at the beginning of creation, and that they are in no way sinful in and of themselves. I suggest, therefore, that if the incarnate Christ was truly Man and not a eunuch, He would surely understand the feeling of sexual attraction, though He never indulged in lustful fantasies or committed any form of sexual sin.

A few thoughts, inspired by this meme: If there is someone on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Personally, I'd say there are a number of people on my f-list who fit that description. Some of you I've even had the privilege of meeting in RL, and finding you just as delightful in person as you are in spirit.

A male person whom I love dearly is of the firm opinion that online relationships are illusory -- that you can't really relate to someone in a meaningful way just through writing. His conviction is that without gesture and tone of voice, without a physical presence in front of you, without a common task, hobby or occupation at which you can work side by side with that person and see how they act even when they aren't using words, you have only a superficial impression of the person you're relating to, and your friendship can never progress beyond vague acquaintance.

Well, that may be true for men -- or most men, anyway -- but I don't think it's equally true for women, for whom verbal communication is primary. Men may (as this male friend of mine claims) need a hockey game or a joint work assignment in order to get to know each other, but most women I know are content to make a pot of tea and a plate of scones and just talk.

So while the Internet may indeed make a very bad deck-building project, I''d say it makes a quite decent pot of tea... and my experience of meeting online friends in RL seems to bear that out.

In the eighteen years I've been talking to people online (yes, I am a net.dinosaur), I have yet to meet someone who was significantly different in the flesh from the way they presented themselves online. That's not to cast any doubt upon the real danger of people misrepresenting themselves for personal gain and/or to take advantage of others -- I know it does happen -- but in the particular message boards, FidoNet echoes, Usenet groups, fan forums, and LiveJournal threads where I've met and befriended people over the years, there really hasn't been much call for that kind of behaviour, and I've never run afoul of it myself.*

And on the whole, I've gained far more than I've lost by making friends online. Some of you I chat with on a near-daily basis: we've laughed together, cried together, prayed together, shared story ideas and bits of writing, and offered sympathy and/or advice as needed. I've received gifts of such generosity and thoughtfulness, some of them from people I'd only just met, that I was moved to tears. Little by little, and sometimes without even realizing I was doing it, I've established a network of contacts with professional writers and editors that has really helped and encouraged me in my writing career. And some of you have done me the honour of coming to visit me and stay in my home for a few days -- an experience that I have always enjoyed and would gladly repeat with any one of you.

So to all my online friends, I raise a cup of virtual tea and say, with all sincerity: to friendship.

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* Admittedly, I have met a couple of people on line who were unpleasant and even dangerous in RL, but there was plenty of warning for that in the way they spoke and conducted themselves online. My mistake wasn't in thinking those people were different than they really were, it was believing I could help them with their problems and not get hurt. I think that I've learned better now.

For anyone who hasn't already seen it, junediamanti has written a brilliant essay on the location of Spinner's End. Not only does it come with pictures (one of which, supplied by julian_black in comments, is positively delicious -- Fred?!) but the comments are hysterical, especially this exchange between junediamanti and tapedeck. (And for those few left scratching their heads and wondering what the joke is about, here's the sketch they're referring to.)

So I guess this latest answer on JKR's official FAQ to the question of how the Order members communicate (and can anybody explain to me how on earth we would have figured that out from reading GoF, the way Jo thinks we all should have???) would strongly suggest that Snape does, in fact, have a Patronus. (Ironic, since cesario suggested last night that it was highly possible he couldn't cast one due to a lack of happy memories, and at the time I was inclined to agree with her. I wonder what Snape's happy memory is?)

In the past, JKR has said that she can't tell us what Snape's Boggart or his Patronus are because it would "give too much away". Well, I think I know what his Boggart is -- ( probable HBP spoiler ). But his Patronus? Something "unique and distinctive" to him, so that nobody could possibly mistake it for anyone else's Patronus? I'm stumped.

Oh, also, I thought of another thing today while doing the dishes. What is it about domestic chores that causes me to think of wacky new HP theories? But anyway: ( another highly possible spoiler for either HBP or Book Seven, your mileage may vary )

I have read the back jacket copy from the US edition that was posted yesterday, but deliberately avoided reading the first chapter excerpts floating around my f-list, because I know that if I start reading any part of the book I won't be able to resist the temptation to open it as soon as I get it and then I'll be up for the rest of the night finishing the thing off, which is just not feasible when you have two preschoolers. I shall start it as soon as I wake up on Saturday morning, which will probably be early, because my brain is doing the giddy kid-at-Christmas thing already...

As part of a discussion in her LiveJournal, Kate Orman wanted to know why I believe it's important that the things the Bible -- and specifically, Jesus Himself -- says about Adam and Eve and the fall of humanity be literally, factually correct, and not merely figuratively or metaphorically true. Couldn't the first few chapters of Genesis be mythical rather than historical, designed to be appreciated by people less scientifically advanced than ourselves? And couldn't Jesus have been speaking to the crowds on that level?

At first glance, it sounds reasonable enough that even if Jesus was the Son of God and not merely a good human teacher, He might have chosen to accomodate the ignorance of his listeners, speaking in mythical terms that they would understand. After all, He told parables, didn't He?

There's a problem with this idea, however. If you look at the gospels, when Jesus used parables and metaphors, it's generally indicated in or obvious from the context that He is using figurative language. Phrases such as "I am the Door", for instance, would not have been understood literally by any of His hearers, and as He goes on to expound on the meaning of His statement it's clear that He's using a metaphor. Elsewhere it's even more obvious, with phrases like, "And He spoke to them in parables, saying..." and in some cases, as in the case of the parable of the sower, a full interpretation of the parable follows, with each symbolic element assigned its literal meaning.

There are no such indicators, however, when Jesus speaks to the Pharisees about divorce and invokes the example of Adam and Eve. He's not merely using Adam and Eve as metaphors, here: He's arguing that because God literally created a literal man and a literal woman and gave them to each other in a literal first marriage, therefore once a man and woman have been joined in marriage, God means them to belong exclusively to one another and to take their relationship seriously. And in the process of making this argument, Jesus quotes directly from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, treating both chapters as historical and authoritative accounts of what God actually said and did at the beginning of creation.

If in this passage Jesus were merely making reference to Genesis as a shared myth with no basis in literal historical fact, then wouldn't actually be proving anything, any more than I would be proving something if I said, "The story of Snow White proves that eating apples is dangerous, and therefore you ought not to eat apples." Of course, one might say, the Pharisees were part of a scientifically ignorant culture and didn't know that the story of Adam and Eve wasn't literally true, so it was okay for Jesus to use the myth in this way to convince them. But that puts Jesus in the position of exploiting the Pharisees' scientific ignorance and using a false argument to persuade them. And it also makes His words irrelevant to us today, because if God did not actually create Adam and Eve as distinct male and female human beings whose union generated the rest of the human race, then the whole basis for Jesus's "one man/one woman/marriage is sacred" argument collapses.

But there's an even more serious problem, involving not just this one passage but indeed the whole message of the Bible from beginning to end. What the Bible tells us, beginning with Genesis and carrying straight through to the end of Revelation, is that sin is a real and terrible problem in the heart of humankind, and that since the events of Genesis 3 all creation has been "groaning" on account of it. In other words, the Bible insists that at some definite, historical point in the past, mankind made a conscious, willful decision to rebel against God and His commandment, thus bringing about the moral corruption of humanity, the inevitability of physical death, and all the disastrous faults we see in the world around us. This is why humanity needed sacrifices for sin (a practice we see beginning with Cain and Abel) and ultimately, a divine, infinite, perfect Redeemer to pay sin's penalty and offer us salvation.

However, if there was no Eden, no Adam and Eve, and no literal space-time fall, there is no such thing as sin -- only faulty creation on God's part. We are left to conclude that somehow God neglected to build into the process of evolution a safeguard to keep it from going wrong, leaving man and nature mere victims of a faulty evolutionary process, and a careless or short-sighted or indifferent God the real author of the phenomenon we call sin. In which case the whole idea of God sending a Redeemer in the form of His Son Jesus Christ is sheer mockery -- God trying to cover up His own mistakes and pin the blame on us.

But the Bible tells us very firmly that God did not make creation as we see it today: rather, He created it "good" and it was only corrupted after humanity fell. Both the Old and New Testaments repeatedly assert that God is not the author of sin; rather, He is completely opposed to and set apart from sin, and it is antithetical to His very nature. At the same time, the Bible insists, we human beings are far from being victims of chance or evolution -- rather, we are all directly and materially responsible for our own moral and spiritual choices, and answerable to a holy God.

Neither the divine righteousness nor the human moral responsibility described in the Bible are possible, however, unless there was at some point a literal commandment that a literal Adam and Eve literally chose to violate, and therefore a literal space-time fall in a literal Eden. Otherwise, the whole concept of "sin" is meaningless. We can't talk about morality, only about the way things have evolved to be -- and as such we have no basis on which to judge any creature's behavior as good or evil, right or wrong, because all of us are nothing more than soft machines programmed by our biology, with no reason to resist any of our biological impulses.

My personal conviction is that the story of Adam and Eve as the father and mother of all human beings, and the Fall as the origin of sin and as the reason for man's estrangement from God, may well be powerful in a mythic or symbolic sense, but in the Biblical context it has no meaning unless it actually happened. Without that element of factuality, the whole Biblical narrative of sin and redemption falls apart. Indeed, without that historical narrative and its climax in the literal death and literal resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Bible itself would tell us that there is no hope, no meaning, and no value in the Christian faith for anyone, and that Christians are to be "pitied above all men".

NOTE: For anyone interested in a more cogent and thorough examination of these ideas, my brother Stephen L. Anderson has written an article entitled "Can Myth Save the Miraculous?" to be published in a forthcoming issue of Philosophy Now. Recommended.

Well, I've been waiting to see if anybody else expressed any of the same misgivings/apprehensions I have, but nobody has, so I guess it's time for me to step up to the plate.

( Being a Look at the Potential Dark Side of the Doctor/Rose Dynamic, With Divers Spoilers for Episodes Already Seen in the UK )

Add to this ( Slight Possible Spoiler Based on an Interview, and Further Theorizing Thereupon )

In short, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark Gallifrey the Doctor/Rose ship, if you ask me -- and at this point I'll be surprised if we don't eventually find out this is the case.

My reaction to finding out that Snape was a Capricorn instead of a Scorpio:

...

...

...

Er, was I supposed to care about this?

Sorry, I've just never had the slightest interest or confidence in astrological signs as a means of personality determination. I don't think I even bothered to decide when D&L Snape's birthday was, since it never came into any of the stories. Besides, if Snape were a Scorpio, as many people sincerely believed suited him to a T -- dude, that would make him the same sign as Kalan Porter (you knew I had to get a reference in there, didn't you?). Any astrological sign which can encompass both those personalities is so vague as to be completely useless, if you ask me.

Speaking of Snape, I've heard rumours -- I'm so out of the loop these days -- that Snape is "really" completely obsessed with his own selfish ambitions to the exclusion of all else, and that he is "really" evil or at least completely amoral and only prepared to support whichever side appears to be winning at the time. *yawn* Sorry, but I seem to recall having this discussion around the time PoA (the book, not the movie) came out and it didn't interest me much then either. JKR will let us know what's really going on in Severus's mind in good time, I'm sure. In the meantime, there are perfectly good canonical reasons to believe that he is not entirely self-interested, and the game of "My Snape Is More Canonical Than Yours Because He's Meaner" smacks of pettiness and wishful thinking to me.

Personally, I'll take any Snape who appears to look, speak and behave similarly to the way he does in canon, and where any obvious deviations from canon are noted and intelligently addressed in the context of the fic. I'm tired of Snapes who are sekritly beyootiful, expert oenophiles, and own sprawling manor houses to which they invite a host of wide-eyed Mary Sues (Hermione!Sue very much included) -- but I'm also tired of Snapes who are actually more vicious, selfish, and flagrantly amoral than I've ever seen Snape behave in canon. Oh, and Snape is not a dribbling psychological mess, either. He certainly has Issues, but if he really had all the Issues that some fic writers foist upon him, the guy would never get anything done because he'd be curled up in a corner in the St. Mungo's psych ward somewhere, gibbering.

( My Snape, for the record... )

I've already written a lengthy essay about the question of Snape's redemption, and a number of stories about the possibility of him having a successful romantic relationship, so I won't bother repeating any of that here. Basically, if my view of Snape is deemed hopelessly romanticized and uncanonical in certain quarters, no skin off my nose. Those who enjoy the stories I write will go on enjoying them, and those who don't are perfectly free to move on and seek out the kinds of stories they do like.

sheryll has kindly given me the go-ahead on this, so I am very happy to present to you my Convention Alley paper in its entirety. (Well, except for the footnotes, but if anybody wants them, let me know and I'll send you the Word document.) Anyway, here goes:

( A Deeply Horrible Person: The Unlikely Redemption of Severus Snape )

So, what do you all think?

So I did the latest Hogwarts Sorting Quiz, and then my computer crashed, so I couldn't blog the exact results as I'd planned. However, it came out something like this:

Ravenclaw - 91
Gryffindor - 88
Hufflepuff - 82
Slytherin - 31

Now, I've always known I was a Ravenclaw. Not brave (or impulsive) enough to be a Gryffindor, not hard-working or clannish enough to be a Hufflepuff, and I lack the necessary ambition, ruthlessness and/or cunning to be a Slytherin. I'm an analytical, introverted kind of gal who likes to play with words -- Ravenclaw would suit me to a T.

That being said, I was really surprised the other day when a friend of mine seemed to think that I was anti-Gryffindor. Because in truth I really have no particular preference, or prejudice, when it comes to the Houses at all. I've been known to complain loudly about the behaviour and attitude of certain Gryffindors, particularly James and Sirius: but if I made a top ten list of my most beloved canonical characters, it would be composed almost exclusively of Gryffindors. There are three canonical characters that I absolutely adore, to the point that they can practically do no wrong in my eyes: Mad-Eye Moody, Dennis Creevey, and Neville Longbottom. All Gryffindors.*

As for Ravenclaw -- well, I might be one myself, but I was pretty unimpressed by Cho Chang in the last book. Sometimes you can think about things too much, and it seems to me that she's doing that over Cedric, to the point where she just can't let him go and move on. And then, of course, there's Luna -- whose character I really enjoy in a lot of ways, and who reminds me a lot of myself when I was in school (wacky outcasts, unite!) but she too has a tendency to let her analytical tendencies run away with her.

Then there's Hufflepuff, which appeals to me because I have a soft spot for the underdog, and I admire loyalty and hard work. But on the other hand, the Hufflepuffs we've met in canon seem a little too quick to believe whatever they're told, and when one of their own seems to be threatened they immediately close ranks without stopping to ask themselves whether the threat is real, or whether they might be acting unfairly to those they exclude -- as Harry found out in CoS.

And finally, Slytherin. I have to say that in spite of finding Snape fascinating as an individual, and in spite of having written him and a couple of Slytherin OCs in a sympathetic fashion, I really don't have a soft spot for Slytherin House at all. As I had Dumbledore tell Maud in TPMA, ambition can be a noble thing -- but what I seem to see more often among Slytherins is a desire for personal power and a willingness to manipulate and deceive (or even coerce) other people in order to achieve the desired end, which worries me. However, I see no reason to suppose that this is true of every member of the House -- we just see that kind of behaviour from the Slytherins with whom Harry comes into conflict.

On the whole, I'd say that every House has its strengths and weaknesses, and I would never be inclined to judge a character's worth or likeability on the basis of which House they come from -- only on the way they behave, and to what extent they represent the best or worst traits of the House into which they were Sorted. Just because certain Gryffindors strike me as insensitive and arrogant, or certain Hufflepuffs seem gossipy and cliquish, doesn't mean that I expect the next Gryffindor or Hufflepuff I come across is going to be the same way.

In short, I am not a Houseist.

* * *

On an unrelated note, I've been trying to make a certain icon for myself ever since I came across a highly amusing comment on fanfic_hate regarding my Remus and Snape fic "Cold Water". But alas, I just can't seem to make the icon work. I spent a couple of hours tinkering with a piece of D&Lish fan art, but even with a bunch of filters and brushes the icon ended up looking completely blah, so I gave up.

So, I'm throwing the challenge open to my graphically inclined friends. Make me an icon using the phrase "Gratuitous Het Writer", and win my undying gratitude and a drabble featuring the characters and fandom of your choice.

Whaddya say?

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* Admittedly, we don't know for certain that Mad-Eye was a Gryffindor, but he certainly seems like one, and I'm assuming that he is until JKR tells us otherwise.

I've just rewritten my Snape essay for Convention Alley.

Er, you may well say, didn't you already finish that thing and turn it in? And the answer is, yeah, I did. It was due on May 15th, and I met the deadline. But that same week I got some really excellent and helpful criticisms from one of my brothers. And though I told myself I'd just work his ideas into the oral presentation and not worry about the essay part of things, I kept thinking about how much better the essay would have been if I'd had time to make the changes he suggested. Finally I realized that deadline or no deadline, I was just not going to be happy until I did a redraft.

Fearing the worst, I asked the convenors if there might still be a chance to submit a revision, if I didn't take too long about it. And to my relief, they said yes. So I spent the last three days tearing the essay to bits and remaking it. After about six hours of editing, I began to wonder if I'd have been better to just forget the first draft entirely and rewrite it from scratch -- but fortunately the last half didn't require as much work as the first.

I have murdered my darlings, and they bled most beautifully. It wasn't easy, but I feel much better about the essay now.*

Now I just have to work on the outline for the oral presentation, my entry for the Weiss ficathon, and the sequel to "Endings and Beginnings"... all of which should keep me busy for the next month at least.

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*Except for one subheading I wrote that makes no sense whatsoever, not only because the allusion was obscure to begin with but because I accidentally misquoted the book of Proverbs. Gah. Why do I do these things?