Someone recently commented (fairly) on the latest Lithium comic;
– yeah that sounds like a fair comment, I just thought I’d talk about this topic for a sec. Because humans are luminous / spiritual beings, and faith / what we believe in is hugely important.
Ok – I believe in God. Madness, I know. Anyone who’s read my work will know that the faith-angle comes into at least a few comics – faith and science forming a symbiotic alliance which is the lever for the whole series. Because faith and science are symbiotic don’t even get me started that’s a different topic …
Anyway if I do believe in God, why use Lithium to absolutely go after religious hypocrites? I’d like to be self-righteous and say that’s what Jesus did (because … he did), but really I go after religious hypocrites because there has been so much damage done to some of my closest friends by religion, and it pisses me off! Not damage done by faith, but by the dogma of my friends’ parents / peers. People trying to get it right … and failing.
And until we name and confess the damage that is done, we can’t fully, wholly love people nor be loved. Confession comes first – this isn’t just a Catholoic thing (I’m not Catholic, but you know), it’s logical. Before we seek relationship, we have to make right what’s wrong – that’s all confession is. Not to confess would be like keeping secrets from people – believe this good stuff without acknowledging the bad human errors that seem to go with it. Nope. That’s not love it’s more like … propaganda which, in the real world, we do all the time. But it’d be nice if love was perfect, huh?
“Faith can just as easily lead to peaceful, loving persons” – yes, absolutely it can. Faith has saved my life, literally. Faith has given me peace, it has challenged me, I have seen it heal people and relationships and I have witnessed religion doing amazing, fantastic things. But we all fail at some point, and until we are able to acknowledge the failures within, we cannot fully accept love, because we’d be accepting it on the basis of us being ‘loving persons’, which we fail to be. Paradox.
We don’t get it right. Nobody does. But that’s ok. That’s the point of love, that’s why we need it – it’s not based on our performance, it’s not given out based on our being perfect – if it was, we’d all be in deep fucking trouble, and I’d be at the front of the line of people getting burnt.
So it’s ok to talk about the failures of religion. And if we apply that logic to ourselves – it’s ok to talk about our personal failures. Because love – real love – transcends that stuff. Boom.
As someone commented somewhere else recently: “You changed my view to love and life and sex you genius bastard… it was a mix of sexual and spiritual pleasure” – I mean that’s a good outcome, right? In a world of abusive, rape-driven pornography – a comic which talks about ethics and healthy relationships and real actual love, and is read by 10+ million people … that’s … good, right? Good ish?
Anyway I realise I’m not going to convert anyone, and people will disagree with lots of the points above, but that’s ok. I used that image at the top of this page because it’s just an old lighting test, and it looks kinda … transcendence -y.
May we all transcend our current selves.
Amen.
