Some things never cease to surprise me.

[alpharaposa]

We live in a culture that is ignorant about religion.

Not just about Christianity or Islam in specific. Ignorant about religion. I've met self-professed pagans as well as Christians who couldn't grasp the idea of holiness.

Let me give an example of this from recent experience:

I am running a BESM game. In this game, a bridge which contained a shrine that held a demon captive exploded, releasing the demon. This destroyed a large part of the town nearby. The intrepid adventuring party shows up and decides to help rebuild things some as well as fight off some of the weird little clay monsters that spawned in the aftermath.

At one point, one of the players gets the idea that the town needs something to rally around. He asks if there's anything really important about the town. I explained that the bridge was really important; it'd been there since before there really was a town. With something that big, the whole town focussed on it. We went through this a few times before he gave up. Then, I mentioned that the rubble from the bridge was being stacked separately from the stones and rubble from houses, and wasn't being used to rebuild houses.

At this, he gets the idea to ask the local stonemasons if they would carve up some of the larger chunks into sculpture. He was surprised when I told him they wouldn't.

Now, this is a created world; it's largely unfinished at this point, with just enough sketched out to have adventures in it. However, the big problem that this player seemed to be having is understanding that the bridge, as well as being a useful thing that brought trade and prosperity to the town, had been a holy thing. It had contained a demon. Its real purpose was keeping that demon from rampaging and killing people. Being a bridge and a wonderful trade route was a beneficial side effect. It didn't stop being a holy thing because it turned out to also be useful. And, while you can find a way to replace the function, you can't replace the holiness of that object so easily.

Even if the players find a way to build a new bridge (a goal they seem to have adopted), that new bridge will probably not be a holy thing. It will merely be a useful thing. The shards of the old bridge will remain the holy thing; the really important thing.

The funny thing is that I didn't explain all this to him at the time. I grew up knowing was holiness was, and among people who treated holy things differently from regular things. That's a natural behavior that I understand. I know it when I see it. It creeps into my world because it's part of what I know. And that's why I keep getting surprised when people don't understand this thing.

Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

I must admit, it does seem like it should be a fairly obvious thing. But then, a key aspect of paganism (and in some way most other religions) is the concept of "sacred space".

[stryck.livejournal.com]

That may be a key concept, but there's a lot of people who profess a religion who don't understand that idea.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Maybe the problem is that religion has become so embroiled in the day to day (politics, anyone?) that it has effectively BECOME ordinary from the point of view of a lot of people.

Which is an odd concept to me in a way; religion SHOULD be part of the day to day....but certainly not in the way of, say, washing the dishes.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

I know I wrote about this not terribly long ago but I can't find the entry now.