On miracles, moving mountains, cosmic optimism

Featuring an actual edutainment etymological party trick

Back in my university days, I read a letter from some monk in the middle ages, used as an instructional example of how language changes. He wrote, as an argument for why we needed to get some Bibles up here to these unwashed savages in northern Europe, in ye olden Danish: "Biblen er den mærkeligste bog der findes!" - literally, "the Bible is the weirdest/strangest book that exists."

But perhaps not so literally: the root of “mærkelig”, “mærke”, just means 'to feel'. The use of the word “mærkelig” to mean “Strange” is a later invention, perhaps from the national character of the Dane as a repressed stoic, where feelings and emotions are are associated with discomfort and treated with suspicion.

Instead, at the time, the word would be read closer to what we today would call "bemærkelsesværdig" - "worthy of attention", or literally, "worth being felt" - worth your time, important. Or even literally “the most felt book' - densest, most impressionable, "most keenly felt". Ie. The bible is the most important, makes the biggest impression on the reader, book. The bible is the bookiest book, the best book to ever book. The Best Book.

I like the story because it is a kind of pun, it has this tension of opposites, where a thing is said that sounds a certain way, but secretly means almost the exact opposite. In casual conversation, it would today sound like a condemnation (weird = eeew, stinky), but it is secretly intended to be the highest praise. A pun a thousand years in the making - a delicious delicacy of language.

But what I really wanted to talk about was this notion, of the bible as the 'mærkeligste' book.

My calls for cosmic optimism and what I call the duty of Joy (Which in retrospect I should have dubbed duty to Joy), and the concept of miracles, are all related. The mystery of the crucifixion is literally the strangest, weirdest thing, that has ever happened. The more you think about it, the weirder it gets. It is a Mystery, as in mystic, not in murder mystery, because it is infinite, you can't ever really get to the bottom of it and solve it. If you take it seriously, that is, and really try to, if you “engage in good will” as we say today, and try to understand, instead of trying to disprove and deconstruct , you find that it is just, infinite. You can think about it forever.

And I think this is by design. When Jesus tells us that everything is possible to one who believes, this is implied. Miracles are performed, so you can believe in the mundane: is it easier to say “get up and walk” to the cripple, or to say “your sins are forgiven”? Is it easier to believe that you will meet a nice girl, than it is to believe the fundamental creative force, the very concept of truth, chose to be tortured to death, because it likes you, and wanted to hang out with you? Bad example perhaps, those two might be pretty close. But you get my point.

One of the boons of the Christian life is that no matter what kind of situation you find yourself in, you can always - you MUST always - say, "well, stranger things have happened". This is why it's the gospel, the good news: You guys are not gone believe this. The strangest thing happened. No, literally. I mean the Strangest Thing. We now know what the strangest thing is. The most absurd, the most unlikely unrealistic unbelievable. Nothing is more unlikely than this, and it happened. That means, technically, that everything is possible.

If you are not a cosmic optimist, you deny Christ, because you imply that whatever bullshit problem you have is a bigger deal than killing death forever. That whatever problem you have is more difficult than surviving dying. That the power to solve your problem needs to be greater than the ultimate transcendental concept of Power itself. It is to claim that you are greater than God, more important than God, more mærkelig than God. It is antichrist.

In conclusion:

No Blackpilling, ever. Forever and ever. Amen.

The fact that you live in history, that the church exists, that Golgatha exists, forces a choice on you. If Christ died for nothing, then history is a tragedy. If the gospel is true, then is is a comedy. Either/or: you must choose, and you are always choosing, whether you like it or not. The Nietzschian unconditional “yes to life” can never happen in a vacuum, it happens in history, in dasein - we are always-already in the world. It is the first question of consciousness and it was asked before Christ, as well as after:

You are now manually existing. Is this awesome y/n?