Good Zombies vs. Bad Zombies
It is dismissed that in non-Christian religions, any practice, language, or experience with the afterlife, or those who have died, is demonic. However, we do in fact see interaction with those in the afterlife and spiritual realm throughout the Bible (1 Sam 28; 1 Kings 17:17-22; 2 Kings 13:21, 4:32-35; Matt 17, 27:51-53; Mark 5:35-43; Luke 7:11-17, 16:19-21; John 11; Acts 9:36-31, 20:7-12; Jude 1:9), and for many, in our personal experience as well. So what makes Christian experiences with the spiritual realm different or better than the experiences of others who do not identify as Christians? If there is a line of difference, where is it? Can we know the sanctity of these experiences through speculation, or is it something we must discern first hand? There is one who did experience voodoo practices first hand in Haiti and Jamaica: Author and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston. She recorded many experiences in her anthropological work, Tell My Horse, including one experience in particular which took place by a waterfall. She takes record of the annual Voodoo ritual where the people would visit a beautiful waterfall, “turn from sordid things” and be washed anew in the water. This is her reflection:
“I fail to see where it would have been more uplifting for them to have been inside a church listening to a man urging them to ‘contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,’ which is just another way of punishing one’s self for nothing. It is very much better for them to climb the rocks in their bare clean feet and meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in beauty.”
In this essay, I will argue for the perennial tradition which advocates for the possibility of God revealing himself and sending her Spirit to those who are practicing other religions, such as Voodoo, by doing a close reading of Hurston’s quote above.
Firstly, I want to note that Hurston’s sentences are matter-of-fact. Her strong tone shows that she already has an opinion that is fully developed throughout her extensive experience with both the Christian and Voodoo religion. She has taken a stance in defence of those at the waterfall, in defence of those individuals in whose searching eyes she looked, in whose smiles she found purity, and in whose bodies she witnessed surrender.
In her first line she says, “I fail to see,” making what she is about to say personal and admittedly biassed. There is also a hint of sarcastic rhetoric in which she insinuates that what she fails to see is, in fact, blatantly obvious.
What she fails to see is how “uplifting” being in a church is compared to being in this Voodoo ceremony at the waterfall. When she says “uplifting”, she does not refer to a shallow attempt to be happy but a genuine condition of ones spirit. ‘Uplifting’ also points to another word, anastasis, meaning resurrection in Greek. ‘Resurrection’ is not “a mere awakening of the sleeping dead”, it is an “uplifting out of sin and death” (Russell, John 5:29). Her use of this word is reflective of Eastern Anastasi Art. Instead of a depiction of Jesus Risen in white outside of the tomb, Anastasi Art shows Jesus physically lifting people up out of hell. Therefore, I don’t believe she is suggesting that dancing in a waterfall is more fun than sitting in hard, wooden pews in a stuffy building for an hour; though a case can be made for this. She is observing which experience is more likely to truly ‘uplift’ the individual. This said, she is not only comparing the waterfall to just any church experience.
She introduced the idea of a church by situating one ‘inside the church’, which can imply being boxed in, closed off from the world, and an insider rather than outsider. Once in church, one is “listening to a man,” not just hearing, but absorbing the words of a man, a mortal. She goes on to say this man is ‘urging’ the people. In this one verb she is painting the picture of an angry preacher; an image not hard to imagine, neither in the 1930’s (when this book was written) or now. This man is urging the people to “contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,” to which she remarks, “is just another way of punishing one’s self for nothing.” Here she is saying that many church leaders teach that Christ’s ‘sufferings’ are our fault, so therefore we should feel guilty. She then follows to say we should not punish ourselves for ‘nothing’. ‘Nothing’ could insinuate we are guiltless, or it could more likely mean that we would be punishing ourselves to no avail. A key Biblical teaching is that humanity did not put Jesus Christ on a cross, He put Himself on a cross for us (Phil 2:6-7) 1 . Additionally, He did not put himself on a cross to make us feel guilty, but to demonstrate His perfect, revolutionary Love, with every expectation that those who experience this Love would be compelled to be like Him and repent of those ‘sordid things’ which this Love has overcome (Rom 2:4). Repentance is not a demand, but a natural response to Christ’s display of Love on the cross (2 Cor 7:9). Therefore, her criticism of this Christian approach to the Cross has merit in Biblical teaching. In other words: She’s not wrong. Christians are taught to punish themselves for nothing.
Now let’s turn to Hurston’s description of the Saut d’Eau ritual. She says it is better for them to “climb the rocks”, which can be contrasted with “sit in church”. This contrast suggests that action and engagement with the world is better than listening to a man in a fragile, limited, church bubble. In climbing the rocks, she said they had, “bare clean feet”. ‘Bare’ can mean unclothed, honest and humble. ‘Clean feet” can remind us of how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, which means Hurston may have been intimating that those climbing the waterfall were having their feet washed by the Voodoo religion’s ‘Master of the Waters’; a similar to the Christian name of the Divine, ‘the Living Water’. She then continued on how much better it is for them to “meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in the beauty.” While capitalizing ‘Him’, she is pointing to the Christian tradition in capitalizing the pronouns for God. In explicitly saying ‘face to face’, she may be playing off the Haitian Catholic tradition of having to use a priest as a mediator, instead of facing God oneself.
Finally, in summarizing how the people are searching for ‘the eternal in the beauty’, Hurston offers a humble and inclusive witness to how humans have an innate desire to seek out the divine. We’re all just searching for the eternal in the beauty. It is important to note as well, ‘Eternel’ is the French translation of YHWH, the name of the Hebrew God, as opposed to the English translation to ‘Lord’. I don’t believe Hurston used the phrasing ‘the eternal’ as a coincidence for, in fact, French is one of the two official languages in Haiti and she would have heard this French name for the Hebrew God during her time there.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2695110/Haitians-trek-waterfall-venerate-saint.html
The German writer, Novalis, called this human longing for beauty—or the eternal—‘sehnsucht’. C.S. Lewis extrapolated on this concept and wrote about how what we find beautiful—so beautiful that we sense traces of the divine within them—are not to be mistaken as the Divine itself; “they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited,” (Weight of Glory, 30-31). This concept of sensing the Divine in art and creation is recorded in the Bible as well (Rom 1:20, Job 12:7-10, Psalm 19:1). So what should we expect of and how shall we understand those people who uniquely experience the wonders of God within their own cultures. Shall we continue to assume all expressions of worship devoid of Christian tradition is demonic or blasphemy? Or shall we humble ourselves in our perspectives and ask God for his eyes to see these people as they truly are; and see ourselves, inside our churches, as we truly are.
How does Hurston’s unique experience speak to the Perennial Tradition? Fr. Richard Rohr gives a simple explanation of how the Perennial Tradition “encompasses the recurring themes in all of the world’s religions and philosophies that continue to say: (1) There is a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things, (2) There is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Divine Reality, and (3) The final goal of existence is union with this Divine Reality,” (Rohr). These three themes outlined by Rohr each apply to Hurston’s account of the waterfall ceremony on pages 233-234 of her book. What is ironic in her description of the Saut d’Eau is how she records the Catholic Church restlessly fighting against this ceremony. Twenty seven years after publishing Tell My Horse, it so happens that the Catholic Church affirmed the Perennial Tradition in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council saying, “All peoples comprise a single community and have a single origin . . . And one also is their final goal: God. . . . The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions,” (Second Vatican Council). While recognizing that the Nostra Aetate may not have been immediately recognized by all Catholic Churches, the irony remains that this non-Christian, African-American anthropologist from the Harlem Renaissance was a forerunner in that which many Christian leaders would come to later learn for themselves: God is all over the place.
So in light of the truth that all of creation is drawn to God, in their spirit and in nature, and also recognizing the honour with which we should give whatever is holy and pure (Phil 4:8), how then shall we approach religions which seem particularly demonic?
You may be wondering why the title of this essay is Good Zombies vs Bad Zombies. A major argument against the integrity of Haitian religion is the existence of zombies. Hurston meets and photographs one in a hospital and shares the opinions of the doctors that there is a drug administered to one who is cursed by their neighbour. This drug is meant to simulate death and destroy the capability of thinking and speaking, essentially turning them into a ‘zombie’ (Hurston, 204). Since the publishing of Hurston’s book in 1938, there has been more research into the existence and application of a “zombie powder” which has been further evidenced by biologist, Wade Davis (Davis, 4).
The title of this essay is not to argue how there are ‘good zombies’ recorded of in the Bible (Matt 27:51-53), and how there are ‘bad zombies’ recorded of throughout other cultures and histories—though I can verify that that is an entertaining discussion. The point of the title is that if we have ever encountered the love and beauty of the cosmic Christ, through which all things were made, we are all dead come alive in a way (Col 1:12-20). Zombified? Maybe not the best illustration. In the wake of “l’Eternel parmi la beauté”, we see that deadly part of us pass away in the light of the new. We also witness to this same resurrection power of YHWH in the Christian ceremony of baptism (Col 2:12). Despite the stigma around other cultures, there is no good or bad version of this. It is simply being brought to life.
“Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are true and faithful.’ And He said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. . .” 2 ”
1. However there are some verses which put the blame on the Pharisees, however that is in efforts to discredit their bias teachings which speak against the deity of Christ (1 Thes 2:14-16).
2. The following verses speak of a “deuteros thanatos” which means “second death” for those who are still “bdelyssō” which means stinky. Many can interpret this to mean those who are still living in foulness will receive a “final” death. However, in the context of baptism, many can also interpret this second death to be a second baptism with fire instead of water.
References
Davis, Wade. Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie. University of North Carolina, 1988.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. Harper Collins E-Books,1999.
Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory. William Collins, 2013.
Rohr, Richard. “The Perennial Tradition.” Centre of Action and Contemplation. https://cac.org/living-school/program-details/the-perennial-tradition/. Accessed 23 June. 2018.
Russell, Charles Taze. Expanded Biblical Comments - Commentary of the Old and New Testament. Chicago Bible Students, 2004.
Second Vatican Council, “Nostra Aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions,” 1, 2.
The Bible, New King James Version. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982.