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| IXTHUS |
This word IXTHUS came to mind the
other night when I awoke at 3 AM. And, no, it had nothing to do with my bladder.
Since I was up, I decided to check out the headlines. I scanned a few stories
and clicked on some related links, and before I knew what had happened, I had
left reality. I had entered the world of mermaids, a world populated by people
obsessed with becoming mermaids
and mermen. What? Yeah, really. And, yes, it’s weird. But let me give you a
fictionalized example of a typical thread from this internet
world…
Mermaid (probably a pseudonym for some
creepy old guy): Wow, I finally found the way to be a REAL mermaid, with a
fin and everything! I had almost given up, but then, I found these instructions
online, and since then I’ve been spending my nights deep in the sea with the
rest of the merpeople.
DesperateToChange: I KNEW there was a way to become a real mermaid! I’ve
been trying for two years, ever since I was twelve, but nothing has worked yet.
Most of the instructions on the internet seem fake. Please tell me what you
did, so I can become a real mermaid. I know that’s what I really am. I’m such a
misfit in the human world.
TriedToo: Me too! I SO want to be a mermaid and be free. I’m so tired
of school and everything, and I look at the ocean, and I just KNOW that’s where
I’m supposed to be. I followed the instructions on another website, and I
stayed in the shower all day, just like it said I was supposed to, but nothing
happened. I’m so depressed. I don’t know what I will do if I can’t find the
real way to change.
Mermaid:
Oh, sorry, I
should have put up the instructions. Here they are – pretty simple really: find
some sea salts and mix them with fresh sand from the beach, add some dirt (this
has to be taken from the sea bottom), and make mud. Then, smear the mud all
over you legs, and lie by the beach on a moonlit night. Make sure the moonlight
hits your legs. Then go swimming to get rid of the mud. The change won’t happen
right then, but over the next month you will have more and more cravings to be
in the water, and then, suddenly, your legs will become a fin, and you’ll be a
mermaid.
DesperateToChange: THANK YOU. Thank you. I’ll try it as soon as possible.
TriedToo: I tried it, and I think it worked! I’ve really been craving
the water more and more. I haven’t seen any hint of my fin yet, but I know it’s
coming. Thanks!
[a
few months later]
DesperateToChange: It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work for me? Please,
please, get back to me. I can’t take it anymore. I have to get away from here,
and this is my last hope. Please respond.
I read several of these sorts of
threads, and, then, with my mind blown, I returned to bed, wondering what in the
world I had just read.
So what’s going on? Let’s see if we
can make any sense of this stuff and determine whether it has any significance
for our own lives:
Stories involving mermaids date back
at least to 1,000 B.C. The first known story involves an Assyrian goddess
Atargatis. According to the
story, she loved a mortal shepherd but accidentally killed him. Overwhelmed by
regret, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish. But, being a goddess
and all, the water could not hide her great beauty, and she transformed into a
mermaid, human from the waist up and a fish from the waist down.
From that point on, stories of
mermaids, and their counterparts (i.e. the Greek sirens and naiads) appeared
periodically in literature and myth. Sirens appear in the Greek epic The Odyssey. Several stories about ‘sea
people’ appear in The One Thousand and One
Nights, and a mermaid-ish character appears in European folklore
during the middle ages. And, of course, there is The Little Mermaid, the story Hans
Christian Andersen published in 1837. This latter work became the basis for
Disney’s The Little
Mermaid.
The mermaids of literature have not
always been the fun, friendly, singing creatures of Disney’s movie. They were
often depicted as deceptive, dangerous, and deadly. Neither were they always
considered beautiful. Sailors, mistaking manatee-like creatures for mermaids,
described them as blobbish and ugly.
Okay, so that’s a brief history of
mermaids. But what’s the significance, and why are some young girls desperate to
become mermaids?
It seems to me that the myths around
mermaids emerge partly from humanity’s desire to understand itself, its origin
and purpose. These myths, at some level, address our collective awareness that
something is missing or lacking in our lives. They tap our yearning for a
different world, and they may even attempt a crude explanation of our current
position in this world.
Let’s start with the latter thought.
Around 600 B.C., a philosopher named Anaximander proposed that mankind had
sprung from an aquatic species of animal. He thought that humans, with their
extended infancy, could not have survived otherwise. Ponder this for a moment.
What he was suggesting was that humanity had evolved from the fish. In other
words, he was proposing both a mer-person ancestry for humanity and an
evolutionary cosmology. So, you see? The evolutionary theory isn’t all that new,
is it?
Anaximander’s theory would account
for both humanity’s oral traditions concerning mer-people and for the desire of some people to
become mer-people. They are merely yearning to return to their genealogical
roots. And, I would think a similar thing could be said concerning the theory of
evolution. Though, if so, you would have to wonder why some folks don’t yearn to
return to their roots as single-cell organisms. (Please, no couch potato
jokes.)
But, of course, this is only one
possible cosmology, and a far-fetched one too, if you ask me.
A better cosmology is stated in the
book of Genesis. There, we learn that man was initially created in a sinless
state, fellowshipping with Almighty God. We learn that sin entered the race
through that man, the earth was cursed, and a separation between God and
humanity erupted. In addition, we discover that each of us was born in that
separated condition, tormented by our fallen nature and yearning for a better
world. And, of course, the Bible tells that, ultimately, we can be freed from
our sinful nature and know that better world through Jesus
Christ.
This biblical cosmology offers a
clearer perspective on what is going on in the weird Internet world of
“I-want-to-be-a-mermaid.”
The young people posting comments
uniformly express an awareness of worldly dysfunction. They lament the
injustices they see in their families, schools and communities. “I hate it here. My parents are so abusive. I just
want to escape.” Or, “I just want to be free. Free from people looking at me and
thinking I’m ugly.” They also express an awareness of inner
dysfunction. They recognize that they are not all they were meant to be. The
thought, “I just want to be more than I am,”
emerges in post after post.
But these thoughts and feelings are
not unique to those wanting to join the mer-people. They are shared by all
people everywhere. We all want to be freed from the injustices of our societies.
We all want freedom from dysfunctional relationships and unfair work loads. More
than that, we all want freedom from ourselves, from our weaknesses and failings.
We want to be freed to become the amazing people we know we were meant to
be.
As is often the case, the yearning
is not the problem; it is the proposed solution that is the problem. The desire
to be a mer-person is simply impractical. Even if it were possible to become
one, there is no reason to suppose that one would be freed from the fallen
nature of the world. In ‘Neptune ’s Kingdom,’
one would still find court intrigues and strife. I would suspect that mermaid
teenagers would be just as likely to be catty as human teenaged
girls.
The solution for these yearnings is
found, ultimately, only in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, we can become so much more
than mer-people. We can be freed to become fully human. We can become humans who
walk in true fellowship with God, humans who know they will one day receive
glorified bodies that look a whole lot better than a fish-man hybrid.
Bottom line? Through reading those
threads I realized again that people are desperate to find the real, lasting
change that brings freedom. And I realized there are an awful lot of people who
do not yet know that the only way to find true freedom is in a relationship with
God through Jesus Christ. This makes me want to redouble my efforts to proclaim
the Gospel, to tell them IXTHUS.
How about
you?
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