A Great Reversal

There are many stories of Tricksters. The trickster is very intelligent. An example would be Native American stories of Coyote and Raven. These stories tell us something about human intelligence. Sometimes the trickster does great things.

Sometimes the trickster is discomfited. When things go awry, this is a reversal. The trickster started out to achieve something, and he ended up sitting on a dung pile. So it is with human intelligence: we accomplish great things, we reach the moon. Then sometimes we get caught in our cunning lies, and we say what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Deceit implies a plan and implies intelligence. Scams are products of intelligence. So intelligence can work both ways, for good and ill. The trickster stories often show this reversal.

Hubris is a reversal. It is not, as is often said, arrogance. Oedipus was not arrogant when he reached the crossroads and unwittingly killed the king, his real father whom he knew not. He was not arrogant when he unwittingly took the queen as wife, for he did not know she was his real mother. From his high point as King of Thebes, there came the great reversal and Oedipus ended a tragic figure. This was through no particular fault of his own. We are in a time of change. Climate change, political change - the new US politics of discord and insults, economic change-some for good, some for ill. How shall we weather this great reversal?

Some will say that the concept of Reversal derived from the Trickster stories are the product of pagan religions, religions that did not have the true religion. This is a good point. However, going back to Matthew 28, verse 12: Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, but whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. This is usually given an interpretation that emphasizes the moral aspect of the quote.

However, it is also an exact description of a Reversal, a reversal of roles. In the Magnificat of the Virgin, we read that God shall cast the mighty from their thrones and raise the lowly. Again, a reversal. This does not imply any continuity between the Gospels and a Trickster Cycle of pre-Christian gods. This merely shows the concept of Reversal is not at all alien from the Gospels, nor from the Jewish tradition which preceded.

All our images, all our feelings, all our hopes and all our fears about the End of Times, about the Apocalypse and a coming Tribulation stem from our being within a Great Reversal. As I have previously stated, we are in the times when mankind is seen as being evil; the product of a passion for God thwarted in a most horrible way.
So, like Richard III, if we cannot be heroes and lovers, we are determined to be proved villains. The great reversal from man as a good being to man as an evil being commenced. This IMAGE is everywhere: on television, in films, in books, in music... The most depraved and degraded images are contained within the products most artful and expertly done! The TV show CSI blasts obscene truths into the living rooms and bedrooms of viewers.

We are totally awash in Mankind as Evil. Mankind as Good is somewhere far away, with little or no exposure to us. I cannot tell you the mind of God. It is hidden from me. I only know God when I act according to the ways I believe godly. It is not a knowledge that can be given in words. If I say that I write about God, I write about my own knowledge. I cannot be like those who say "God is here." or "God is there." or "God is in that book....or that one over there." However, I think I know His wrath when I feel it scrape over the hairs on my neck. We must look and feel God's presence. Else, we shall miss what He shows us. We must take a stand in godliness against this Reversal.