When I was in seminary, one of my professors told me, “Before God, there was a sense of the sacred.” Long before people started theologizing, they looked at the rising sun, thunderstorms, mighty oceans, and the stars with awe and wonder. Peering into Kilauea’s vast caldera, I knew why Hawaiians of old and today considered this a holy place. Just in front of the observation deck, someone had left an offering to Pele, the Hawaiian god of volcanos, both creator and destroyer and mother of their island home.
When I checked the live cam that morning, Kilauea was still geysering magma high in the air but, when we got there before dusk, the earth’s rage had ceased and all that remained was a vast expanse of grey and black rock ribboned with a few streaks of molten lava. Disappointing, but I would have felt like a real rube if I’d come to The Big Island and missed seeing an active volcano. That’s something we just don’t have in Jersey. My daughter was more interested in boogie-boarding and took a pass, so my wife and I left her in the care of her aunt and made the journey from Kona-Kilauea by ourselves. Taking the long way on the Belt Road, we stopped at a roadside joint serving malasadas, a type of Portuguese doughnut, and Kona coffee to fortify ourselves for the drive into Hilo and then to the national park.
Munching on our sugary treats, we looked at a mother hen guiding her chicks through the flora and fauna while below us the mighty Pacific stretched as far as the eye could see. Sipping my coffee, I remembered that the first Polynesians to settle this archipelago travelled five thousand miles across open ocean in canoes with only the stars to guide them while their European contemporaries were still afraid to sail beyond the sight of land – fearing that they would fall of the edge of the world. The first people who beheld Kilauea might not have invented the wheel, but they weren’t stupid. The also had a lot of guts. What prompted them to leave the safe shores of home for an unknown place and watch as their familiar stars were replaced by the constellations of a new hemisphere? Some believe they were fleeing the new religion of Oro taking hold in their lands, a god who demanded sacrifices of flesh and blood and had displaced Kane, their benevolent god, the creator of life. Not the first time that has happened.
“In the Old Testament,” I once told my daughter, “God often comes across as a big meanie – flooding the earth, destroying cities, turning people into salt, playing mind games – but, as the Bible went on, we see Him start turning into a much nicer guy. Then, by the time when we get to the Gospels, God is no longer something to be feared but loved and who loves us.”
‘Why daddy?” Natalie, said.
“God didn’t change,” I said. “We did. The Bible is the story of us discovering God.”
Of course, the first Christian missionaries who came to Hawaii were aghast at the islander’s heathenish ways and set about converting them post haste, only to end up almost wiping the natives out with European diseases, enslaving them, and eventually stealing their lands in the service of the deities those newcomers truly loved – money and power. In the 1966 movie Hawaii, Max von Sydow portrayed one of those missionaries a year after he starred as Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told. But if Jesus had seen the afflictions heaped on the Hawaiians in his name, he would have, as Max would later quip in Annie Hall, “Never stopped throwing up.” Well, it wasn’t the first time serpents has ruined a paradise. Makes you wonder if things would have been better if Captain Cook’s ship had sunk.
Staring at Pele’s offering, I held my wife’s hand in the evening chill as the low lying clouds hugging the hills began to incandesce in the rays of the setting sun. Then, as shadows chased away the light, night revealed a beauty only darkness could reveal – Kilauea’s caldera had become a lake of fire. The scientific part of my brain knew how this volcano came to be but, as I beheld its power, those facts were swept away by a primal sense of awe. Knowing instinctually, I was in a sacred place, I silently offered a prayer to Pele and remembered that all religion begins in wonder. I’m very glad I went there.
Then I got home and watched Donald Trump and J.D. Vance squirm in their pew as a bishop asked then to have mercy on immigrants and LGBT people while Melania glowered with what might’ve been contempt. The bishop, who didn’t insult our new leaders, professed Christians both, but asked them only to remember the kindness Jesus preached. By the end of the day, however, some GOP wag called for the American born bishop to be deported and Donald, being Donald, dismissed the clergywoman as a “leftist” kook. I guess people don’t go to church to be preached too. Then again, a Baptist minister recently described how his fellow pastors would preach about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part about turning the other cheek, only to have their parishioners come up to them after the service and ask, “Where’d you get those liberal talking points?” When Jesus’ own words are considered suspect by Christians, then something is very, very wrong.
Eighty-two percent of evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump, despite their fellow theologian John Piper proclaiming, “Trump’s immoral behavior in the past, and his ongoing unwillingness to renounce it as evil, show that he is morally unfit to lead our nation.” Why did they vote for a man who has constantly spread division and confusion instead of trying to uplift and inspire us? Why pick a man who, while the paint was still drying in the Oval Office said, “What? Do you want me to go swimming?” after being asked if he’d visit the site of that terrible airplane crash in D.C.? Who, instead of consoling grieving families, launched into a tirade against his perceived enemies? Not to gang up on evangelicals, lots of Catholics voted for him too, but the only answer I can come up with is that some of them have lost sight of what Jesus was truly about. But this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened. History is replete with examples of believers perverting the Gospels in pursuit of money, status, power and a false sense of certainty. Just ask the Hawaiians.
Seeing this kind of stuff, its small wonder people are deserting organized religion in droves. You don’t have to be an expert in theology or biblical exegesis to see that the craven and mendacious takeover of American Christianity by people who consider the Gospels “weak” or “too woke” and hell bent on political dominance are just another iteration of the Pharisees and Sadducees Jesus continuously railed against. Splitting that scene, far from being indicative of “godlessness” is actually a healthy reaction. Who wants to put up with that shit? Oddly enough, that that fills me with hope. The Church – and when I say “church” I mean all the denominational flavors out there – will always survive, it just may turn into something different. That’s happened many times over it’s history. The very first Christians would’ve been hard pressed to recognize “The Way” a scant three hundred years later as bishops began wearing funny hats, doctrinal battles raged, and the Lord’s breaking of bread became a ritualized affair. Then again, religion is usually a one step forward and two steps back kind of thing. The Catholic Church once condoned slavery and capital punishment. Now it does not. Once popes proclaimed, “Outside of the church there is no salvation.” Now they say, “all religions are pathways to reach God.” God doesn’t change; we do. Perhaps more change is coming.
Like those brave first Hawaiians in their canoes, I think disaffected believers and religious “nones,” rejecting the ravenous new “American God” consuming money and blood, are already unfurling their sails in search of a new home. It won’t be easy. There will be ups and downs and their hope will be tried but, while their former brethren foment ignorance and anger whilst clinging to the paranoid certitude of their insular shores, these explorers won’t fall of the edge of the world. Instead, by crossing that vast expanse of sacred wonder that is available to all, they will rejuvenate what is old and true, discover revelations afresh and, perhaps realize, “It is better to be Christian without saying it, than to proclaim it without being it.” Maybe then they’ll eventually start building a paradise where compassion, gratitude and love is “The Way.” I think that would make Jesus very happy. Palm trees and boogie-boarding would be nice too.
Aloha.
