Use Your Allusion: Falstaff

Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character that has appeared in three of Shakespeare's plays. He is used largely (no pun intended) for comic relief. He is a companion to Prince Hal in Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and in Wives Of Windsor.

His character is fairly easy to summarize. He is an obese, vainglorious, cowardly knight. One critic refers to him as a "lying tub of lard." He leads Prince Hal into trouble, and is ultimately repudiated when Hal becomes king.

Falstaff is a fun allusion, partly because his name sounds humorous. Some have argued that it is actually an innuendo for impotence, as if he is so drunk most of the time, he is unable to perform. I'll not say more about that.

I do take requests for Use Your Allusion posts, and my old buddy Jeremy suggested Falstaff might be a good one to mention. Thanks, buddy!

If you ever need to refer to a dishonest, self-centered, overweight person, you might find a way to work in the name "Falstaff."

Use Your Allusion: Détente

Détente (pronounced "day-TAHNT") is not really an allusion, but a French term. It is most often used about relationships between nations. It has to do with the relaxing of tensions between formerly hostile groups. What I think is significant about the concept is that while tensions are relaxed, the parties remain very separate.

I encountered this word in a book about overcoming church conflict called Making Peace. They used the term to describe a negative example where two parties disagree, then reach a solution that involves less waves on the surface but no reconciliation between disagreeing parties.

This term was used a lot in the last hundred years about the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union. We weren't dropping bombs on each other, but we were training our children in school what to do in case the Commies attacked. We signed treaties which would limit the expansion of nuclear programs to peaceful use, however much of our intent was more centered around preventing the spread of weapons to other smaller, turbulent nations, rather than on limiting the superpowers from doing what we pleased.

Similarly, there are quite a few examples I could use about how congregations will have, more or less, two congregations meeting in one building at different times because of a disagreement; usually about worship. There might not be open conflict, but there may still be distrust between groups. This is an example of détente; where there is not fighting, but there really isn't real peace either.

Détente means that we sleep with one eye open. Things are calmer on the surface than they might have been, but we're not taking any combative options off the table. While it may seem necessary for international relations, it is not a desirable practice in churches, when genuine peace is possible and divisions can be dissolved. Real peace is not easy, but it is to be desired over détente.

Use Your Allusion: Volpone

Volpone is a character in a comedy by Ben Johnson of the same name, originally printed in 1607.

Volpone is a childless man, and he manages to draw some attention to himself by pretending that he is imminently about to die, and is therefore seeking an heir.

Several suitors show up, and visit his bedside. Volpone's sidekick is named Mosca. Mosca secretly convinces each of these suitors that if he gives Volpone an expensive suitable gift, then it is certain that he will become the heir.

Volpone gloats over the great gifts he starts receiving, but since Mosca has integrity as lacking as that of Volpone, it is only a matter of time before Mosca tries to blackmail Volpone out of his treasures. Volpone decides to confess to the authorities and have both of them be punished, rather than see Mosca take away his fortune.

This is not a character I've seen alluded to often, but it is an amusing story. You could definitely use this of someone who is a hypochondriac, who looks to get special treatment and attention from people disproportionate to how ill they actually are. In fact, you could call them "Volpone", and it's unlikely they'd even know what you meant!

Use Your Allusion: McCarthyism

'McCarthyism' sprang forth in the 1950s, and derives its name from Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (1909-1957). McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, where he set out on a hunt for Communists who he believed were infiltrating the American government.

On example of his thinking is a speech he gave on February 9, 1950 to a group of Republican women in Wheeling, West Virginia. He produced a piece of paper about which he claimed:

I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

As a result of his work, many citizens suspected of being Communist sympathizers were blacklisted and faced discrimination. His tactics were very unpopular among the other Senators, and eventually he was censured with a unanimous vote from the Democrats and with the Republicans voting 50/50.

Today, McCarthyism is a term invoked to describe a political witch hunt, particularly when a person's patriotism is brought into question, and the accusations are unsubstantiated.

Many view McCarthy with disdain, while others have believed he is deserving of a better reputation. Ann Coulter, for instance, dedicated an entire chapter of her book Treason to defending McCarthy, and suggesting that the Democrats denounced him for fear that they were actually guilty of his accusations.

---------------------------------------

I think this is an important term to be aware of in light of the recent election. Obama has frequently been accused of promoting a socialist agenda, particularly when he suggested that we should "spread the wealth around." Some have suggested that he is a Communist.

This image is a good example of the suggestions that some have been making.

Are the charges justified? Are they just unsubstantiated accusations...McCarthyism? I'll leave that up to other people to argue about. Ultimately, we'll have to wait and see what decisions he makes as our next President.

But when someone speaks about attacks on Obama as McCarthyism, at least you'll know what they mean.

Use Your Allusion: "With Bated Breath"

Several months ago, Matt suggested that I explain the phrase "with bated breath" in one of my allusion posts. My apologies to Matt for not noticing his request sooner (I do take requests).

This is probably less of an allusion, and more of an expression. But my goal for this series of posts is to help us all expand our minds a bit, and for this purpose, it will work.

According to this guy, "With bated breath" was first used by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice when Shylock says to Antonio,

“Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this ...”.

Unfortunately, this phrase is commonly misspelled as "with baited breath." This is likely because of our cessation of using the word "bated." Bated, which is a form of "abated" after it has undergone aphesis, means "reduced, lessened, or lowered in force."

To say you wait with "bated breath" means you almost stop breathing because of a strong emotion, such as shock, fear, or awe.

Geoffrey Taylor has cleverly seized the common misspelling of this phrase and written a humorous poem called The Cruel Clever Cat.

Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.

Use Your Allusion: Simeon the Stylite

Simeon Stylites, or Simeon the Stylite, lived from 390 to 459 AD. He was an Arab who became very interested in Christianity after hearing a lecture on the Beatitudes at the age of 13. By the time he was 16, he had joined a monastery. He was particularly dedicated to an ascetic lifestyle, and would often fast for long periods of time; sometimes to his own detriment.

He had several different ventures where he would try and cut himself off from the world, but because of his unconventional life, he was constantly beraded by people seeking his prayers and advice.

The first of these ventures was that he shut himself in a hut for three years. Later, he began standing continually upright for as long as his limbs would hold him up. Eventually, he went to live on the rocky Sheik Barakat Mountain, where he imprisoned himself to live in a space that was less than 20 meters in diameter. But people kept seeking him out, so that he wasn't able to find time for his own meditation and devotions.

It was obvious that he wasn't going to be able to escape the world horizonally, so he decided to do so vertically. Amongst some ruins, he discovered a pillar that was about 13 feet high. He built a platform on top of it, then began to live there. Some of the other monks were concerned he was doing it for attention rather than devotion, and they decided to test him to see if he would be obedient to their requests to come down. When he demonstrated that he was willing to comply with whatever they demanded, instead they decided to let him stay on the pillar.

Some of his admirers eventually built him taller pillars. The last one which he lived on was about 40 feet high, and it had a platform that was about 12 square feet. He lived atop this pillar for a total of 37 years until he died. (Pictured are the remains of the pillar, marked with a boulder on top of it) And again, the more unusual he was in seeking solitude, the more people continued to seek him out. He became quite famous, and inspired many imitators called stylites, in reference to him.
---------------

I don't know how frequently Simeon the Stylite is used as an allusion in modern times. It might be a good reference for someone who is terribly anti-social. I personally think the best use of Simeon the Stylite would be in reference to David Blaine's recent "Dive of Death." Blaine hung upside down for 60 hours, though occasionally he took water breaks and potty breaks. Yawn. Compared to Simeon, David Blaine is a total wimp.

Use Your Allusion: Penelope

Penelope is a key figure in Homer's Odyssey. Her husband Odysseus had been called away several years ago to fight in the Trojan War. They have a son together, Telemachus, who is with her. Because Odysseus has been gone for so long, many presume him to be dead. Penelope has numerous suitors who pester her day and night, wanting to marry her.

She comes up with several brilliant ways to delay them. One of which is that she claims that she cannot marry any of them until she finishes weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus' elderly father. This holds them off for three years, because every day she weaves on the shroud, but then every night, she unravels all the weaving that she had done that day. Eventually, her means of delaying them are discovered, and she is forced to come up with other ways.

At the end of the story, her husband returns home at first in secret, but then fights off the other suitors, in a display of his manliness involving stringing a bow that only he could.

Penelope is a great symbol of fidelity, as she refused to give up on her husband, and remained faithful to him. Penelope also makes a nice allusion when you speak of how she managed to delay her suitors by means of her weaving and unraveling the shroud.

Recently, a movie came out titled Penelope (2006) where Christina Ricci stars as a girl, born with a pig's snout, who has many potential suitors, but who has trouble finding one, because of her family's fear that she will be rejected because of her looks. She meets them secretly, behind a two-way mirror, trying to find a person she trusts enough to let see her face. Honestly, it was a great movie, that I thought communicated the importance of learning to love yourself, and not being so caught up in what society judges as beauty.

Use Your Allusion: Madame Defarge

Madame Defarge is a fictional character from Charles Dickens' work A Tale of Two Cities. She is arguably the main villain of the book, and is a tireless worker in the French Revolution. She is a picture of scheming and bitterness.

She's used as a representative of the Greek Fates. The Fates would cut an individual string that represented each person's life. A person could not live longer than the Fates had determined, which was represented by their own string. Madame Defarge would always be knitting, and as she knit, in her mind, she would be knitting the names of those she wanted to die into her work.

In the story, she seeks the lives of Charles Darnay's family out of vengeance for the lives of several of her own family members.

Madame Defarge shows up as a character in Mel Brooks' movie A History Of The World: Part One. Humorously, in his version, she has run out of wool, so she just sits there rubbing her knitting needles together.

Most people who allude to Madame Defarge will be alluding to her scheming nature, and will most likely reference her knitting.

Use Your Allusion: Hester Prynne

Hester Prynne is a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In it, Prynne is a woman who comes to the United States to live in a Puritan settlement in Boston. Her husband, who is much older than her, came ahead of her, but somehow never arrived and was presumed lost at sea. But Prynne has a daughter named Pearl, who is undoubtedly the product of an adulterous relationship. Hester Prynne is forced to always wear a red (scarlet) letter 'A' on her chest, which stands for her sin of adultery. Though the people insult her, mock her, and pressure her, she refuses to give the name of the one she had cheated with. If you haven't read it, I would rather not reveal how it all unfolds. But I will say that her husband shows up, concealing his identity from all but Prynne under the name of Chillingworth. He is driven to have his revenge on the one who committed this sin with his spouse.

It's a tough story, but the book was one of my favorites that we read in high school. Hester is really a good natured person who does many philanthropic things, but because of her mistake she is always scorned by the other settlers. Though she has made a bad decision, the book really evokes a lot of sympathy from the reader. This story is a good one in reflecting on the need for forgiveness and grace toward other people. It's also a powerful picture of what guilt can do to a person when sin is not brought to light. Though Hester is scorned, at least she has confessed. Her partner in adultery is widely respected, but is emotionally torn up every time he sees her be mocked. He knows he deserves it as much as she. Much of the story is him trying to gain the courage to confront his own sin.

----------------------------------------------------------------

With a lot of high profile affairs and unwed pregnancies in the political realm lately, Hester Prynne is a name that might be alluded to a lot in the near future.

Use Your Allusion: In The Words of Homer...

When I went to Mexico in July, I stopped by the bookstore at the airport to find something to read. If given the option, I will almost always pick an older book that is recognized as a classic. (1) They're not going to disappoint in terms of quality and (2) They're dirt cheap compared to new releases.

This trip I decided to read through Homer's Odyssey. I didn't finish it, but I got about 60 pages into it. I'm the type of person who always reads introductions and extra notes in the backs of books before I read the books themselves. I found some things in Homer's writing that I really liked in terms of his flowery language. Below is a list of some of Homer's expressions that are used to express simple ideas. They are full of references to Greek deities and cultural ideas. I'll not explain them all in this post. I found these very amusing.

Try whipping some of these out next time you're at home:

• "The wooden guardian of our privacy, quick on its axel turn." = "Shut the door"
  
  
• "Bring forth some remnant of Promethean theft, quick to expand the inclement air congealed by Boreas' rude breath." = "Light the fire"
  
  
• "Apply thine engine to the spongy door, set Bacchus free from his glassy prison." = "Uncork the bottle"
  
  
• "And strip white Ceres of her nut-brown coat." = "Take the crust off of the bread"

As a child, I refused to eat bread crust. I really wish I had known #4 back then so I could order my mother around. "Mommy, would you please strip white Ceres of her nut-brown coat?" :-)

Use Your Allusion: Forth Bridge

The Forth Bridge was built in 1890 on the east coast of Scotland. It is a cantilevered railway bridge across the Firth of Forth, linking Fife and Lothian together. As you can see in the pictures, it is really quite an impressive piece of engineering and design.

Apparently, the bridge has always required constant maintenance. So at least for Scottish people, to allude to the Forth Bridge is to allude to a never ending project. A common expression is, "I'm painting the Forth Bridge," because as soon as the workers finished painting it, they would have to start painting it again.

Sometimes this allusion is used of government legislation when, for example, by the time the legislation gets agreed upon, approved, and passed, it is already outdated and pointless.

Use Your Allusion: Pooh-Bah

Pooh-Bah is a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado (1885). When a cheap tailor named Ko-Ko was given a rank as Lord-High-Executioner, many officials refused to serve under someone who had been a peasant. Pooh-Bah was so haughty that he did not mind continuing to serve, so he accepted all of their positions as well as all of their salaries. Whenever Pooh-Bah shows up anywhere, it means most of the towns officials have shown up, as he carries the titles. Hence, Pooh-Bah was designated Lord-High-Everything-Else, because his titles were too numerous to mention every time someone addressed him.

It is still common in modern performances of the play that when at some points his titles are enumerated, in addition to those scripted, people will add many more modern references to jobs that he might hold as a source of humor.

When you now call someone a Pooh-Bah (sometimes spelled Poohbah), you are saying they are either a very self-important person, or someone who holds many offices at the same time.

Use Your Allusion: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) was a Catholic extremist who gathered with a band co-conspirators to try and blow up James I and his parliament on November 5, 1605. Fawkes was not actually the leader of the group, but because of his experience with both military and explosives, he was in charge of executing the plan. Their effort, now known as the Gunpowder Plot, was stopped before it happened when they were discovered by the authorities in the cellar of the House of Lords with barrels of gunpowder, which Fawkes was presently guarding. Fawkes, along with seven of his co-conspirators, were tried and executed.

Now when people allude to Guy Fawkes, they are calling someone a clever schemer or secret conspirator. If someone alludes to a Gunpowder Plot, they are referring to an unsuccessful attempt to remove someone from power.

Several years ago, Guy Fawkes would have been a much more obscure allusion to mention, but after the movie V For Vendetta came out (2005), the Guy Fawkes masks, featured in the movie by the character V who was also a conspirator against the government, became a popular Halloween costume.

Use Your Allusion: Elephant Man

Joseph Merrick (1862-1890) was born with a rare disease, now thought to have been Proteus syndrome, which caused severe deformities in his face. He spent his adult years working as a fairground freak on exibit. Sir Frederick Treves was a surgeon who had compassion on him and eventually rescued him from his miserable plight, giving him sanctuary in the London hospital.

To refer to someone as an elephant man is synonymous to saying they are a very conspicuous freakish person.

A recent use of this allusion:

"If either party...does not wish to continue the relationship, they must clearly and considerately state this in a manner that reassures the other party that they are not the Elephant Man/Woman without being patronising." - Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones' Diary, 1999

Use Your Allusion: Laocoön

This is the first allusion post I've made in a long time, and I hope to start posting them regularly again, as I've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback about them from my regular readers and friends.

Today, I am posting about Laocoön. There is a famous sculpture of Laocoön from around 50BC. In Greek mythology, Laocoön was a Trojan priest who warned them not to accept the Trojan Horse.

He said:

Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.

As it turns out, he was right. But unfortunately for him, the gods were angry that he attempted to intervene and protect the people, so they sent two gigantic sea serpents to crush him and his sons.

Often, allusions to Laocoön are made to this particular carving, which was discovered during the Renaissance and is now on display in the Vatican Museum, more than to his specific actions. If someone seems all tied up and miserable in his or her situation, you can compare them to Laocoön.

About my blog

It's been interesting for me to see the directions my blog has gone. I got started in October of 2005 with a post that I think was fairly astute about some measures of what a wise person is like.

I have since blogged on a variety of topics, usually based on my present experiences in life. I have some friends who have tried to use their blogs as key parts of their ministry. I have written quite a few posts on religious topics, though I view my blog more for the purpose of a diary (especially in posts such as this one) and like a messy file box where I throw everything I don't want to forget (like Youtube videos and technology stuff that I like). As of right now, I have 487 posts. (Less than 487 are visible to you, O Reader, because some of them I simply wrote to save as drafts for me to remember, not for anyone else to see. These are usually rants about either religion or politics that I decided wouldn't be productive to post publicly.)

I've noticed in the last few months that I have made many fewer posts about spiritual observations. I think this is largely because since I've been at Old Hickory, I offer the invitation devotional every Wednesday night. I've thought that I might start typing them out and placing them on here, because I generally discard them after I've delivered them. If I feel like they are of sufficient quality, I may post some of them.

Then again, I think since I have so many friends who do large amounts of blogging about spiritual matters, I don't want to do it just for the sake of doing it. It's also been hard on me since I have to make so many posts online each week for the two online classes I'm in right now.

As a way of giving me an increased sense of routine, I started my "Nacho Cat" posts, which I try to put up every Wednesday, and most Fridays I try to put a "Use Your Allusion" post up. Whether I do either of these often depends on how well caught up I am at work. I really enjoy blogging, but priorities have to be priorities.

My blog certainly doesn't have as much traffic as many who view blogging as a ministry, or as people who are in more of the public spotlight. That having said, my blog is currently averaging a little over 50 hits per day, and I've now had over 16,000 hits total. I find that really mind boggling.

To whoever has continued to read my blog: First of all, I am flattered that anyone cares what I have to say about anything. Thanks for reading this stuff. I primarily blog for myself, but I'm sure that if no one ever stopped by, I would have already given up on it by now. Secondly, is there anything you would like to see more of on here? I've had a couple of buddies joke with me that I take entirely too many pictures of my cat. This is probably true, but again, this blog is primarily a place for me to remember what I want to remember. Beyond that, though, I'm happy to oblige people if I'm able. Anything you want more of?

For as long as I feel this is a helpful thing for me--I do find it very therapeutic--I will continue to post. I'm sure that within 10 years, some new thing may have replaced blogs, but I have this nice happy place in my head where I picture some of my descendants reading over some of this stuff long after I'm dead. I really wish my great-great-great-parents could have blogged during the 1800's. It would have been interesting to read now. Perhaps arrogantly, though hopefully not, I like to think that this might be interesting to someone who wonders what it was like to be me, living in this time.

Use Your Allusion: King Log

Defined concisely: A king log is a ruler who is so peaceful and quiet in his reign that his subjects never feel his power.

It comes from a story attributed to Aesop about a group of frogs who became discontent with their life in the pond, and started begging Zeus to give them a king to rule over them. Zeus found their request humorous, and he sent them down a huge log which dropped into the pond.

At first they feared the log, but before long, since it never moved, they became less afraid of it and even began climbing on it. They cried out to Zeus again, begging him for a better king that would actually move. So Zeus sent them down a stork that promptly began devouring the frogs.

They pleaded with Zeus to take away the King Stork, but Zeus refused, saying that they had received what they requested, and should live with the consequences.

The moral of the story can be taken in different ways. Some would say, "Leave well enough alone." Others might say, "Be careful what you wish for."

There is a bit of humor that has been widely circulated, probably inspired by this story, of a stork attempting to eat a frog that is resisting him by choking the stork. It usually appears with the caption, "Never give up."

So depending on what you want out of your leaders, to have a "King Log" could be a good thing or a bad thing. It's nice to have a ruler who isn't afraid to step up and take action, but when the action comes at great cost to the citizens, perhaps having an inactive ruler might be a preferable option. It's also a good caveat about letting any one part of a government have too much power.

Use Your Allusion: Jezebel

Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab. I Kings 16 says that he married her, and while he was already committing plenty of sins, she turned him to Baal worship also. She was a major villain from I Kings 16 through II Kings 9.

She tried to have the prophet Elijah killed. Even with the showdown on Mt. Carmel where God overwhelmingly demonstrated his own existence and the falsehood of Baal worship, rather than convert, she tried to go after Elijah.

One of her most treacherous acts was in setting up Naboth to be falsely accused and murdered so that King Ahab could take over Naboth's family vineyard which he hadn't wanted to sell.

She died--according to prophecy--by being thrown out of a window, where dogs consumed her body so that she did not receive a proper burial.

If you call someone a "Jezebel", you are calling them a brilliantly wicked, cold, calculating shrew. Even the Bible itself uses Jezebel as an allusion in Revelation 2:20.

-----------------------------------
We watched the first episode of The Apprentice last night. I was not entirely surprised to see that Omarosa is back. I was thinking about how firmly she has established her reputation as an absolute venomous snake of a person. Last night she was in her usual form, utterly attacking her competition. (In Hebrew, I would be using the Piel form here, an intensification of the verb for "attack")

These days it is uncommon to meet girls named "Jezebel" because of the horrendous Biblical Queen Jezebel who opposed Elijah. I've noticed some people use Omarosa's name in a similar way these days.

In Bible translations, there are certain names that get translated in ways that don't sound like the original that much. "Iacaboy" is translated "James" in English, and as "Santiago" in Spanish. If someone were translating the Bible for the first time into English in the American dialect and there had not been an easy way to transliterate Jezebel's name, I wonder if using "Omarosa" would have been an appropriate substitute.

Does that woman give anyone else chills besides me?

Note: To any of you Omarosa fans, I'm sure that she isn't really pure evil, and I know she is involved in some positive charitable organizations. Even so, she's made quite a name for herself by her actions on the Apprentice. If my connecting her to Jezebel offends you, my apologies.

Use Your Allusion: The Witch of Endor

The witch (or medium) at Endor is a Biblical allusion. It comes from I Samuel 28. King Saul was at a very low point of his life, and was actually nearer to the end of his life than he realized. At Samuel's direction, he had driven all of the witches and necromancers out of the land to please God. But now, the Urium and Thummim were not working, the prophets received no messages for him, and Saul knew that he was no longer receiving God's guidance. Along with this, Samuel had died, and was no longer there to instruct Saul in how to follow God.

Saul asked his men if there were any witches left, and they told him of this particular witch in Endor. He went in disguise, not revealing his identity to her. She verbally acknowledged that the king had executed and driven out her type, and she hesitated to offer her services, but when he insisted that she would not be harmed, she agreed. As soon as she saw the spirit of
Samuel rising up, she became afraid because she realized that Saul had tricked her. Samuel told Saul through the medium that God was displeased with him because of his repeated disobedience, and that he would die. Saul was overwhelmed, but ended up remaining a while longer at the witch's house, even allowing her to cook a meal for him.

It is a depressing passage of Scripture to see Israel's first king stooping so low that he seeks comfort from the evil people God had commissioned him to destroy. This marked Saul's complete separation from God, at least as I see it.

--------------------

This is not an allusion that is used all the time, but it's good to at least be aware of where it comes from. To talk about "The Witch at Endor", it sounds like it could have easily come from mythology or Sci-Fi movie. I have always found it interesting that in the Star Wars movies, the Ewoks lived on the forrest moon of Endor. (I'm sure the locations are not one and the same, but I've wondered "Why the same name?"...it's bound to be borrowed from the Biblical story)

I've found it interesting how many times in my life I've had teachers try and explain away the fact that the ghost of Samuel really did appear in this case. Most commonly, I've been told that "The reason that witch got scared was because this was the first time it had ever worked!" How could she have a career/reputation as a medium if she was unable to do what she claimed? I realize that necromancy was closely associated with hallucinogenic drugs in these times, but that to me is not enough of an explanation for this passage to say that she usually just got people high.

I find a lot of those shows interesting where people claim to talk to the dead relatives and friends of audience members. Part of me wants to believe it's true, and the skeptic in me wants to laugh at all of it. As Christians, I think we are foolish to ignore the real existence of evil in the world around us. It doesn't shake my faith at all to acknowledge the possibility of someone having some sort of spirit in them, as the witch was reputed to have at Endor. What a great victory Satan has if he can convince us that he isn't real. We may not encounter demonic activity through ghosts and boogey-men experiences, but we see the prevalent greed, corruption, and pride around us, and we can know that plenty of people are believing the lies that Satan tells us so skillfully. If we seek stability from sources other than God--especially if we try to circumvent God as Saul had done--we set ourselves up for demise, as did Saul.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this passage, or on the uses of necromancy?


-----
Addendum: It just occurred to me that I have referred to a "Jonathan Edwards" in the last two posts, though unintentionally, and for completely unrelated reasons.

Use Your Allusion: Scheherazade

Scheherazade is a legendary Persian queen, and the storyteller of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. There was a Persian emperor named Shahriar who had been cheated on by his first wife, and as a result, he never trusted any women. He would marry a new bride each day, but would condemn her to death on the following morning so that she would never have the chance to cheat on him. After 3,000 other wives, all who were executed, he ended up marrying the beautiful Scheherazade, who was a bit wiser than the others.

On the first night, Scheherazade began telling him an enchanting tale, but left it unfinished. He was so curious to hear what would happen next, he spared her life on the next day so that she would continue her tale and he could hear the end of it. She managed to keep this routine going for 1,001 nights.

By the end of the story, they had three children together, and Scheherazade had taught the emperor much about integrity and kindness through the things woven into her tale. She was not only spared, but continued to be the emperor's consort.

This allusion was used a lot in Stephen King's book Misery. An insane fan keeps an author locked in her house, breaking his legs to keep him from getting away. Though she intends for them both to die together, he postpones it by continuing to write a new book. She is so eager to see what will happen in the story, she holds off on killing him. King must have drawn a lot of his inspiration for this book from the life of Scheherazade.

When you are in a position where you are forced to distract someone with something interesting for your own safety or wellbeing, you might compare yourself to Scheherazade.