Aura Salve
So there you are, walking along the street, minding your own business and getting along okay, when some stranger flags you down with something important to tell you.
“Hey, hey, you there,” he says, “You can’t see it, but you have holes in your aura! That means you have Aura Rot, which is a horrible cosmic disease! If you don’t do something about it, your aura will totally rot away and you’ll have no aura left, which could have Big Ramifications.”
You are shocked, of course. You can’t see your own aura or anyone else’s, and you never really felt like you had holes in your aura or anything. But this guy sounds like he’s serious.
“It’s a good thing I saw you,” the man says, “because I have exactly what you need. It just so happens that I deal in Aura Salve, an invisible, intangible ointment that you need to spread all over your aura every day. Every day. You have to trust me.”
So here this guy is, offering a wonderful solution to a problem you didn’t even know you had. Even if this guy really sincerely believes you have Aura Rot, you hadn’t ever noticed it before, and you still have no reason to believe you have it now. All you have to go on is the testimony of him and all of the other Aura Salve salesmen like him, because they are offering a made-up solution to a made-up problem.
In a like manner, it is hard for me to shake the notion that some approaches to Christianity offer made-up solutions to a made-up problem. These approaches tell you that God is mad at you for the bad things you have done, and that he is going to punish you with an eternity of torture in hell because it’s what you deserve.
Leave for a moment that logical problem with this, which is that a “just” God is going to dish out infinite punishment for a finite quantity of sin. The problem is that, as a grown-up, when I do something wrong, I feel bad because I feel like I did something wrong, not because I fear being punished for it. The guilt I already feel is a lot of torment on it’s own. Committing sins–real sins, not made-up ones–carries its own punishment in terms of fractured relationships, compounded brokenness, inner guilt, and ultimately a spiritual hardening. I’m not worried about going to a hell that may or may not exist anyway. I’m worried about the stuff that happens now: not only the the proximate results of my broken behavior, but also the collective results of all of the broken behavior in our broken human existence: depression, alienation, anger, insecurity, cynicism, anxiety, mental illness, suffering, starvation, pain, terror, death. I am worried enough about that stuff without also being worried that God is going to torture me in hell as a punishment.
On the other hand, there are plenty of things that many would consider sins that just don’t seem like they’re honestly very bad. For these things I feel no real guilt or trouble in the here and now anyway.
So along comes the Aura Salve salesman who tells me that my actual problem is not the obvious pain and brokenness that I (and everyone else) actually am in the middle of right now, but the hell that angry God is going to condemn me to for breaking God’s rules, many of which the Aura Salve salesman has to convince me are even God’s rules in the first place. Nevertheless, the Aura Salve salesman is ready to tell me how lucky I am that he has done such a wonderful thing to save me from my Aura Rot problem.
In fact, he tells me, I am so lucky that I should dedicate my life to thanking him and using and promoting Aura Salve myself.
(Author’s Note: This is adapted and updated from an old post on my personal blog, Sailing to Byzantium)
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I find it interesting that this post has evolved from a question of sin to a question of hell. Or, rather, it was always about hell, but the question of whether sin even exists seems to have been a more pressing question upon the initial writing.
Would you say that you’ve settled a bit more on that question now?
Hmm, maybe. I think I have narrowed it a bit, but I think it’s just a matter of being more precise about what I am criticizing. This post is still about sin to the extent that “sin” means “you broke God’s law so you have earned an eternity of torture in hell.” Really the issue is the extent to which religion attempts to solve any problem that is not self-evident. People can know that they are broken, or feel guilt and shame because they know they do things they shouldn’t, or feel a yearning desire for somethign that they never seem to be able to satisfy, without a missionary explaining to them that that’s their problem. But nobody is worried about eternal tortur in hell because of their disobedience unless the missionary tells them about it in the first place.
So in that sense, this is still about sin, just about certain understandings of sin. Life’s fucked up enough without borrowing trouble. Religion needs to address our real problems (whether we consciously recognize them or not), not make up new ones for us to worry about.
I like the point you are making.
Religion defines what we care about, what our ultimate concerns are, whether its being “good” or being “ritually pure” or “successful” or whatever.
Good religion (to me) has us caring about stuff that matters to us and others, on a human level, makes us stronger, more loving, better humans. Religion that does not address our actual humanity, and posits a false picture of who we are, becomes oppressive, destructive or irrelevant.
There are side-effects to any “Aura Salve” and certainly contraindications. One religion may screw one type of person over, while making another sublimely happy. As Jesus said, we should count the cost.
I always kind of liked the LDS take on the afterlife (even if I probably don’t understand it in its entirety). On my mission people would ask me if I believed that all the non-Mormons in the world were going to hell. And I would tell them that I absolutely didn’t believe that. The way I understand it, under LDS doctrine, the great majority of people are going to end up in a place far, far better than the place we’re in now no matter what they do. The LDS teach there are degrees of glory, but even the lowest degree is so wonderful we can’t even imagine it.
Just as we see the nature laws at work in the world right now (“not only the the proximate results of my broken behavior, but also the collective results of all of the broken behavior in our broken human existence: depression, alienation, anger, insecurity, cynicism, anxiety, mental illness, suffering, starvation, pain, terror, death”), I suspect that natural laws will also apply in determining our destiny in the afterlife. Maybe it just seems like something made-up because we haven’t experienced it yet and have no reference for understanding it.
I agree that the LDS view of the world, and what it teaches people to care about can be extremely good for people. Sure, plenty of people get off-kilter and make too much of “aura rot” rather than actual rot.
Mormons generally focus on improving themselves, being good people to others, and raising strong families.
I like the concept of higher law vs. lower law rather than good vs. evil, heaven/hell and commensurate reward.
Mormons have a lot of “made up” problems that people “MUST” avoid (coffee anyone?), but in some people these devised pre-occupations can end up simply distracting people from other problematic and destructive practices, rather than contributing to them.
Aura salve made me laugh because it is a metaphor for so many sales pitches. What I felt from your writing was guilt. (Not guilt that you personally have). Aura salve would be Christ and what you are getting from Him is guilt. The salesman explained it all wrong and you got the wrong interpretation. What the message is supposed to be is hope. You did something to hurt another person. The point isn’t that it caused another hole in your aura, the point is that with help you can remove that hole.
No, the point is that, if the salesman has to convince me that I have a problem before he sells me a solution, then he is bamboozling me.
Sure, but what if you do discover you have a problem and you haven’t heard any solutions yet? Then you are stuck with a significant problem and no idea how to fix it.
Then the person offering you a solution is not an Aura Salve salesman.
I’m only talking about the salesman who has to convince me that I have the problem before he sells me the solution. That is an Aura Salve salesman.
So, aura salve is guilt and the salesman is a myriad of people who have tried to make you feel that way? And you are annoyed and angry with people who package this and sell it? The real problem is the brokenness you feel. You feel broken because when you do something wrong you feel bad because that is the culture you grew up in. This is what you are saying, correct?
Aura Rot (God’s punishment due to the “demands of justice” and hell) is the made-up problem, therefore Aura Salve (salvation from God’s punishment to “the demands of justice” and hell) is the made-up solution.
The consequences of sin are manifest by brokenness in this life (a real problem), not necessarily some eternal placement in the next (a fake one).
Did I get it right, Kullervo?
Yeah, basically. Here’s a good summary by well-known theologian Brad Paisley:
THAT SONG ROCKS.
AMEN.
Apparently you can actually buy Aura Salve on Amazon for the low price of $12.95.
That is amazing. I need to buy some, just in honor of this post.