Cultural Encounters and Miscegenation in the Imagination of Octavia Butler

A few years ago, my son David talked to me about science fiction writers.  David is a voracious reader, one of the side effects of growing up in the home of two teachers.  One of the marvels of this young man is the way he used to read large collections of a genre and compare and critique.  When we talked, he was explaining to me the ideological patterns he saw in science fiction as different authors constructed utopian and dystopian visions of worlds to come.  I had not given it much thought, but there is neocon science fiction and liberal science fiction.  I also had not thought about the fact that most of these science fiction writers envision a world much like the dominant narratives of most fiction--populated by white males as the agents of history.  So he told me about female writers and one particularly interesting black female, Octavia Butler.

Butler has won awards from the science fiction world for her writings.  So science fiction writers in general have appreciated her work.  Aspects of her work resonate with many science fiction novels and stories:  there are alien beings, interplanetary travel, advanced technologies, apocalyptic wars, biological variations that blend what we think of as animals and plants, and social structures that differ from conventional families and political structures.  So for science fiction readers, you get what you expect from Butler.

What you may not expect is a sophisticated account of race and gender.  I read a trilogy that is variously called the Xenogenesis trilogy and Lillith's Brood when republished as a set in one volume.  As the trilogy name indicates, the issue of foreignness and difference is at the heart of this multigenerational narrative.  Moreover, at the core of it is the fear of what "miscegenation" means for the existence of a race, or even for the human race.  I will do my best to avoid any spoilers about critical eventualities in these stories.

The human character whose presence continues through each novel is Lillith, a survivor of a devastating apocalyptic nuclear war on earth which destroyed human society and made the planet uninhabitable.  The reader meets Lillith on an alien spaceship that is a dwelling, more than a ship, in orbit near Earth.  She is slowly learning where she is, who she is with, and what will be next in her life.  What becomes clear quickly is that some small portion of humanity was saved from certain death by an alien race of people, the Oankali, whose existence involves exploring the solar system searching for habitable planets and compatible races of beings with whom to join their lives.

Lillith becomes quickly concerned about her future among the Oankali.  They describe their family structure to her, and it becomes apparent that they hope, or plan, for her to become a human mate within a complex family of humans and Oankali.  They have the ability to manipulate genes and cell structures.  They learn from each species they meet and evolve into better forms of their species.  They call this process "trading."  From their point of view, each species benefits.  From Lillith's point of view, she and her descendents will lose their identity as humans and be absorbed into the Oankali.  This theme never goes far below the surface throughout the whole trilogy.  Lillith never arrives at a comfortable resolution.  That's not telling too much.  It is part of the dramatic driving force of the stories.

As fiction is able to do, these stories ask again and again about what might constitute miscegenation.  Part of the question being asked is whether there is such a thing as continuity of identity that passes through multiple generations.  Are humans always changing, and what changes disrupt their humanity?  In contrast to the fear of blending Oankali DNA with human DNA, Butler describes the surviving humans who begin to repopulate the Earth as the remnants of many ethnic and cultural groups.  More of the population of the Southern Hemisphere survived, and some communities are made up of a variety of "races" living together.  Their greatest hope is to repopulate the Earth, but they express little concern about separating the races.  The narrative occasionally makes passing remarks about various communities with greater and less diversity, and with some residual attitudes toward difference based on skin color.  So it is not a naive depiction of post-apocalyptic race relations, but a politically credible view of how human difference might diminish in human social relations when a more overwhelming difference becomes a challenge.  Butler's explorations here are tentative rather than dogmatic.

The exploration of difference between the Oankali and humans has depth of insight.  The Oankali seem sure that their approach to interspecies relations is consensual, although their technological advantages belie some aspects of the consent.  The social power of the Oankali sets a tight range of options for humans.  They are not willing for certain outcomes to occur.  They believe there is an inherent flaw in humanity, and they want to eradicate it.  Here Butler is delving deep into the forgetfulness of contemporary racism.  The Oankali are not inclined to be violent toward humans, and they understand their relationship to humanity as benevolent.  They are seeking to elevate humanity to live longer, be healthier, achieve greater things, and survive as a species.  In return, they are strengthened by elements of humanity they have discovered and absorbed into themselves.  But if their plan is carried forward, will the semi-consensual assimilation of the residents of Earth leave anything recognizably human?  Butler pushes deep into this question through the entire series.

Turning another direction, Butler is also challenging gender politics.  The somewhat dystopian world that results from non-cooperation with the Oankali shows humanity in a harsh perspective as women become commodities for trade and suffer rape and violence at the hands of raiding parties.  In contrast, the Oankali exist as a three-gendered community.  Male and female in Oankali existence do not fit into conventional human stereotypes.  A third neither male nor female gender, the ooloi gender, plays perhaps the most powerful role in the society and family.  Females are largest and strongest.  Males are gatherers and more conversational.  Ooloi are most scientific and political, and they are the key marriage partner in reproduction.  I am not sure I have meditated long enough on the implied gender politics, but it does seem obvious that describing a three-gendered species is a device for Butler to examine the ways that domination and equality function.  The ooloi are benevolent dominant partners, but from the perspective of their human interrogators, their ability to dominate by using biologically sophisticated means, no matter how benevolent, remains a problematic part of their relationships.

I'll not try to pretend to be an expert on Butler's work today.  I'm not going to do any theological speculations at this point beyond the implications of race and gender politics that I have already mentioned.  I do look forward to reading more of her books, as friends have talked with me about some of their favorites already.  Thanks to David for pointing me in this direction.  As is almost always true, an intense foray into narrative fiction was a great mind refresher for me.

An Ironic Reading of Psalm 8: Is Humanity All That Much?

Psalm 8

To the leader: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O Lord, our Sovereign,
  how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes and infants
  you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
to silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
  the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
  mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
  and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
  you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
  and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
  whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Sovereign,
  how majestic is your name in all the earth!

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I recently attended Emmaus Way community's Sunday worship gathering.  The preaching at Emmaus Way usually takes the form of a conversation, or at least a dialogical sermon.  Pastor Tim Conder led the conversation on Psalm 8, calling on persons in the congregation to read the Psalm aloud, then launching some open-ended questions for the gathered community to ponder and discuss.  If you are not familiar with Emmaus Way and Conder, then you may be interested to check out a book written by Conder and fellow pastor Dan Rhodes, Free for All:  Rediscovering the Bible in Community.  Dan and Tim and their congregation have developed a way of reading in community that seeks to embody what numerous theologians and church trendspotters have been describing in theory.  Now that I've given Emmaus Way and Free for All a plug, I'm going to shift away from that event and do some of my own reflections.

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I have been thinking about the reading and misreading of this Psalm for many years.  At the heart of it is the phrase that the Authorized Version (KJV) translates "a little lower than the angels."  "Angels" translates the Hebrew plural of the generic term for God:  Elohim.  Thus most recent translations have changed the sense of the text to say that humans are a little less than God.

Perhaps it is in part the reference to the angels that leads to the problem I have with common readings of the text.  I am not a person who rejects the notion of hierarchy in all of its possibilities, although I do reject the idea that systems of domination are a necessary part of human existence.  So theories of hierarchy always evoke a sharper scrutiny when I find them imposed upon or derived from biblical texts.  In conversations about this text, I usually hear the construction of a vast hierarchy of being.  This assumption rightly understands that God is that than which no greater can be conceived.  Then the ranks get assigned from higher to lower:  angels, humans, various land, air, and sea animals.  The heritage of dominion theology finds its way into Christian theology, to a great extent, from this passage linked to other biblical texts.

But is this Psalm an effort to assert the rank of humanity within the great chain of being?  Certainly we know that has been a common reading of it through many different eras and in many different places.  Perhaps that ought to be enough to convince me to just "leave it alone."  I can't do that.  The concept of dominion as domination has too great a corrupting influence for me to leave it alone.  

Churches teaching dominion as domination, combined with Americanized pre-millenialism, is what led former U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt to claim that industries should be allowed to rapidly use up the earth's resources without regard to pollution or damage to ecological systems.  For Watt and his fellow-travelers, God gave humans the earth to use, and since the world would end soon humans must get to work and use it up fast.  Dominion as domination is what led European Christian leaders, theologians, bishops, popes, kings, and speculators to theorize an Imperial World Order under domination of the white races, in which all other peoples of the world find their value and meaning in serving the good of the superior white Europeans.

If dominion as domination corrupts Christian theology and practice so horribly, then it seems incumbent on readers to think again about constructing an extensive hierarchical metaphysics behind, around, and in front of this Psalm.  There are other possibilities here.  Issues of empire, of environmental degradation, and of the potential for human damage to one another all may help the reader raise questions about received interpretations of this text.

One thing a reader has to remember about reading the Psalms is that they are the outcries of God's people in lament, praise, thanksgiving, fear, and longing.  They are not necessarily statements of divine ordering, even if they often do give insight into the divine order.  They are written as the words of Israel to God, not as divine decrees.  This characteristic of the Psalms helps to explain statements such as the one in Psalm 137 which proclaims a blessing upon those who "take your little ones and dash them against the rocks."  Infanticide, although it may serve to display an exaggerated or distorted anger toward enemies, will not bring a blessing from God.  The prayer of Psalm 137 expresses the vengeful orientation of some of the Jewish exiles.  It is not any kind of divine decree.  Elsewhere, the Psalms call on God to destroy enemies and other self-centered acts.  Just because someone, even someone as prestigious as King David, prayed such a prayer does not mean that the prayer expresses the will of God.

With that caveat in mind, Psalm 8 offers a vision of humanity's place in the grand scheme of things without necessarily revealing a divinely decreed ranking of species.  It says that humanity has been made a little less than divine, made to be the dominant force among species on earth.  It need not be interpreted to say that God made everything to be under humans, or made humans to dominate everything else.  Any of us could observe, without the need of a theory of hierarchical status, that in the grand scheme of this planet's existence, human beings are capable of great and fearful acts.  Our species, just short of the divine power of God, can burn down a forest, pollute a lake, wear out fertile land, poison waters, and more. 

I have heard some people say this Psalm can't be about environmental degradation because that is a modern concept that ancient peoples would not understand.  I disagree.  Archaeologists tell a history of the Greek islands which hosted prosperous communities only to have their soil eroded by deforestation, overpopulation, and overcultivation, leaving only bare rocky crags jutting out of the sea.  The ancient cities of Babylon were eventually abandoned and buried in sand, in part from the deforestation and overcultivation of land which became barren and underwent desertification.  In the wealthy city-states of the Maya, in fertile and productive regions, silting of rivers from deforestation and overpopulation led to the decline of highly civilized communities.  Ancient farmers of China, India, and Peru developed sophisticated methods of combating soil erosion, recognizing how it occurs and what its results would be.  So environmental degradation caused by human activity is not anew idea.  People of ancient times, before and after the Israel of the Psalmists, knew of this human possibility.  Human beings are capable of building up and destroying great life on vast tracts of land, across great empires.  Why else would we find existing in ancient Israelite law a plan for letting land lie fallow?  They knew that human activity can destroy productive farmland.

It is not uncommon in biblical interpretation to identify a statement as ironic, as representative of a view to be upheld for ridicule.  With that in mind, it is worth considering whether some of the latter portion of Psalm 8 might be rhetorically ironic.  Are there any textual clues that might make us alert to potential ironic language?  I think there may be more than one.

Clearly the Psalm displays a primary theme of the majesty and sovereignty of God over all creation.  The opening and closing lines bracket all else with this affirmation.  After the initial affirmations of God's greatness, the Psalm takes a surprising turn (in a text that scholars say is very difficult to translate) by saying that the cries of infants and babes protect the people from the enemies of God.  Hmmm... That is not an image of human might.  It is not elevating human cleverness to near divinity.  As we move beyond this difficult verse, the next part reverts to the majesty of God as the context to offer an inquiry of perplexity.  God's works are so great, who are we scrawny human beings?  Why would God even notice us?  Here we find an acknowledgment of the incapacity of humanity to approach the greatness of God's works.

Then comes the passage that many use to justify a divinely sanctioned hierarchy of beings.  "You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor."  It is not hard to imagine such words coming from the mouth of the emperor, or from the official mouthpiece charged with praising the emperor.  We know that this sort of praise of imperial power was widespread in the era of biblical writings, lasting even into the era of Eusebius's praise of Constantine in the post-canonical era.  Could it be that the Psalmist, who has been belittling human capacity in order to evoke humility before the majesty of God has now put these ironic words into the mouths of arrogant humanity?  We are just a little less than divine (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).  We can run this world (into the ground).  King Soandso is the head man in charge of this world and day by day everything is getting better and better (oh, yeah, right!).

To say that all creation is "under their feet" is to acknowledge that it is far too easy to crush and stomp God's good creation to death.  It is to acknowledge that walking softly, leaving a light footprint, is necessary in this world.  Other species can disappear and be destroyed because of the power of humanity.  It is not to say that ever living thing and every non-living thing is our underling.  It is to say that we are capable of sustaining the good of all, or of destroying all of it, including ourselves.  The cattle and sheep, the wild creatures, birds, fish and sea creatures, are all also God's good creation.  An overestimate of human importance is another attempt to do what the first humans in the Garden did--an attempt to become like God.  Thus, the final line returns to the first.  It is God, not arrogant humanity, who is great.

I recognize that I am swimming upstream with this proposed interpretation.  Many doctrinal questions arise concerning the imago Dei, human uniqueness, visions of creation, and probably more.  Of course, this literary interpretation faces many possible objections from other literary readings, along with other types of textual analysis.  But I've chewed on it long enough and lived with it long enough to think that it at least deserves some conversational scrutiny.  I have, as always, plenty more to say.   But for now, have at it.

The Maker and Appraiser, part 2
Jeremiah 18:1-11

(This was the Men's Day message for the 8 am service at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on September 9, 2007.)

If we turn to today’s text, I think we can gain some solid footing for an answer. Jeremiah’s prophetic hermeneutic urged the people of Jerusalem in his day to think again about the measure of a man. He told them about going down to the potter’s house to watch the skilled craftsman work. The potter was throwing clay on the wheel. He was shaping it with his hands and maybe with some specialized tools of the trade. A lump of clay that seemed ready for service was being transformed into a pot, a vessel, a useful implement and a thing of beauty. But somewhere along the process, things went wrong. The clay took on a mind of its own. It warped and got out of shape. A crack appeared in the soft clay that would be a fatal flaw in light of the purpose the potter had for the vessel. As Jeremiah said, the vessel “was spoiled in the potter’s hand.” What had begun to look like a fine clay pot turned out to be a warped, cracked, useless vessel.

Had it been our day, in our throwaway society, we might have tossed it in the landfill and run out to Wal-Mart to replace it with something else we can throw away next month. Sometimes that’s the way our society deals with boys and men, too. When they get out of hand, when their problems get too big to handle, when their frustration builds up to the point of lashing out, we give up on them. The problems seem to hard to solve, so we throw them away. Put them out of school. Put them out of the house. Put them in the jail. Put them out on the street. Put them in the ground. But human beings are not throwaway commodities. We are not single-use, disposable items. Thank God for showing Jeremiah another way.

When the vessel was spoiled, the potter did not throw it away. The potter reworked it. He found the hard spot in the lump of clay and worked it with his hands until it become smooth and malleable. He kneaded the place that had cracked back into the rest of the lump to get rid of the variations in moisture and flexibility and build up the stability in the clay. He wanted the lump of clay to have the character required to make a pot hold together, be useful, and last a long time. He wanted it to be sturdy so that it could be adorned and display the beauty and goodness that already lay within it as a potentiality. So Jeremiah said, “he reworked it.”
The skilled potter did not go out on the street and grab someone who knew nothing about the craft to ask, “What should I do with this?” No, the skilled potter was both the maker and the appraiser. The potter knew how to make a pot, and he also knew a good pot from a bad pot. He knew good, reusable clay when he examined it. He had the ability to judge when a pot was spoiled in the making. He could appraise the measure of a clay pot.

I went outside this week and found a surveying crew next door. Someone is thinking about buying the house there. They want to know exactly what piece of land they are buying. Now I could have walked over and told them that as I see it, the property line runs along this driveway and this fence, comes to about right here and runs up through those bushes to a spot on the hill. But they don’t want that kind of sloppy guesswork. They want someone who knows how to spot and measure the lot. The survey crew was skilled, had precise equipment, and was trained to locate each corner of the lot.

Another example more directly about appraisal may be helpful here. Apparently it has become very popular to go to a big meeting hall, carrying some old stuff from your house, and ask experts how much it is worth. I’ve seen a couple of television programs that show people telling a story about a piece of furniture, a photograph, a sports souvenir, or some other item. Then an appraiser responds with some historical information, offers a few tidbits of trivia, and finally states an estimate of the dollar value of the item. It’s not a wild guess, but it’s based on experience of seeing other similar items and evaluating their condition. An appraiser knows a lot about certain kinds of items and is therefore qualified to make a statement about their value.

The potter was both the maker and the appraiser. Who knew more about the pots than the one who made them? He could tell when they would function and when they would fail. He could evaluate their strength and stability. He could appraise their usefulness, their value, their worth. And if he saw that they fell short of what they should be, he could rework them. It was his skill that gave them their value in the first place. He used high quality materials and high quality methods to produce a high quality product. He put high quality labor into the task and took pride in doing good work. And when he needed to, he reworked the pot to make sure it met the standards of quality that matched the vision of the maker.

Thanks be to God for the potter that reworked the clay. On Men’s Day, we need to praise the God who reworks spoiled lumps of clay. We need to call on that same God to rework our spoiled lives and make us useful, good, beautiful vessels for God’s service. God will rework us. Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, God will rework you.” We need to admit our sins, the ways that we have been spoiled for service to God, and pray, “God, rework me.” Say it with me, “God, rework me.” And Mt. Level needs to be ready to let go of the pebbles that are mixed up in our clay, the cracks in our vessel, and cry out, “God, rework us.” We know we are flawed as persons and as a congregation. We know we leak and can’t sit right without wobbling. We know we do stuff we don’t need to do while we let slip away things we ought to have done. But the God who is like the potter has no intention to toss us in the trash heap.

God will rework us. It may not all feel good. An effective muscle massage may have to work some sore spots to get the tightness and knots out that are keeping us down. A successful cycle of physical therapy means fighting through some tears when the pain seems more than we can bear. But all through the struggle, and waiting for us at the other end of the struggle is the God we know in Jesus Christ. God has already envisioned what we are to become. And God’s purpose for men, and for all of us, is that we grow up to the measure of true humanity in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the measuring tool. And God is able to appraise the measure of a man because God’s own self became flesh, became clay, and lived among us. He has thorough inside knowledge of what a human being is capable of being. He is the maker, he is present in creation with us, and he is the appraiser, the measurer. God knows the measure of a man. God has shown us the measure of a man. God will rework us into the measure of a man.

A good measuring tool must be precision made. If you are trying to measure a board, you don’t want a measuring tape that marks off a foot as 12 inches, give or take an inch. You need to know precisely how many feet and inches you measure. Otherwise what you build will be crooked and unstable. If you are trying to measure a piece of fabric, you don’t want an inch to be sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. You want a tape that is precise. Otherwise, the waistband may not go around you when you finish, or one leg of the pants may be shorter than the other.

Well, Jesus is the precise measuring tool for humanity. He is begotten from eternity, the very Word of God, the true Adam, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. He knew temptation just as we do, but he did not give in to sin and evil. He was faithful to the end. He loved those God had sent his way to the end, even to his death on the Cross. He is the firstborn of the dead, the firstborn of many brothers and sister. He is the measure of humanity. He was loving, just, and merciful in the use of power. He took time to give of himself to those who could not repay him, and he took the lowest place when he could have tried to claim he highest place. He was the same non-violent, faithful friend in private and public, in comfort and in trouble.

Today on Men’s Day, I profess to you that Jesus is the measure of a man. And just as God raised him from the dead, God will rework you and bring you from death to life, out of darkness into his marvelous light. God will rework us. God, rework us. God, rework us. Say it with me, “God, rework us.”

Perhaps this morning you have come to see that the flaws and irregularities of the way you are living have spoiled you as a vessel of love, as a vessel of service. This may be the day when you need for the first time to say, “God, rework me.” This may be your hour to come to Jesus, to call on him to be the Lord of your life. If you want to place your life into the hands of the potter who is your maker, who measures by a righteous standard of love and grace, then come to follow Jesus today.

Perhaps you already have started down the path of following Jesus, but you find yourself wandering and going astray. Maybe you simply have lost the passion of bringing good news to the poor and setting at liberty those who are oppressed. Maybe you have left off the weightier matters of justice and mercy, and find yourself going through the motions of tithing your mint and your cumin. Your heart is on treasures that rust and rot and can be stolen away. This may be your day to come to God and say, “Rework me to be a useful vessel for your service. Restore unto me the joy of my salvation. Make me a channel of blessing to all those I meet.”

There may be someone here who is a follower of Jesus but is not a member of a congregation in Durham. Maybe you are actively looking for a church home. Or maybe you have been drifting without committing yourself to be part of the work of a church. If the Holy Spirit is prodding you to put your life alongside the lives of others who are serving God here at Mt. Level, then don’t resist. Come and unite with this congregation today, so that God can rework all of us together to be a better witness to God’s love in this community.

The doors of the church are open. Whosoever will may come.