Rastafari had Hope

Aside from Religious Studies, I am also taking a psychology class titled Psychopathology. In this class, we study various mental illnesses, personality disorders as well as mood disorders. In class today, I found myself thinking of the Rastafari movement many times. In Psychopathology, we were learning about the hopelessness theory of depression. In this theory, it states that having feelings of hopelessness can lead to specific and debilitating depressive symptoms. Several times during the lecture, I found myself drawing connections to the African people and their situation in Jamaica, and I came to the conclusion that these were a strong group of people that really never gave up hope, despite all of the terrible circumstances in which they lived. And not giving up hope caused them to create a system of symbols and beliefs that gave their lives meaning and purpose and raised their morale and increased the enjoyment of their lives.

In the hopelessness theory of depression, feelings of hopelessness are characterized by someone thinking that highly aversive will undoubtedly happen in the future and that there is no way for a positive outcome to occur. They believe that there is no way for them to achieve their goals, and there is no way to stop the terrible things that will occur in the future.  And one of the main causes for these hopeless thoughts have to deal with how someone interprets causes for certain aspects of their lives. Say someone failed a test, they could believe that they failed because they didn't try hard enough, the professor hates them or is a hard grader, or they think internally and actually believe that they failed because they are dumb. It was found that having thoughts like the last one, where you believe you are internally and perpetually dumb causes the most psychological distress. Always blaming yourself for your situation is not really the best thing to do.

When learning about this, I kept on thinking how many white leaders or colonialists were trying to make these Rastafarians actually interpret their socioeconomic status in an eternal way. The Rastas were raised in an environment where, from birth, they are lead to believe that they are fundamentally inferior to the whites. On page 31 of Rastafari: From Outcasts to Cultural Bearers, Edmonds writes

While these overt forms of oppression met constant resistance, there was widespread acceptance of the ideas that associate whiteness with beauty, goodness, and God and that associate blackness with ugliness, evil, and the devil... The end result was an endemic lack of self-knowledge and healthy self-identity among Afro-Jamaicans.

This quote shows that the Afro-Jamaicans were raised in a society that wanted them to believe they were somehow inferior. But this quote also shows that these forms of oppression were always met with constant resistance. Rastas were put into an environment where others wanted them to feel responsible for their poverty or perceived inferiority, but their strength came in the rejection of those ideals. And the rejection of those ideals caused them to not have feelings of hopelessness that could lead to a nation wide epidemic of depression.

  

Instead of giving into what the colonialist whites wanted, the Afro-Jamaicans instead never gave up hope, They instead looked to bible scripture and found a specific interpretation that explained their situation and gave them hope to change their lives. Instead of going with an extremely psychologically distressing explanation of their lives (blaming themselves like the colonialists wanted) they instead chose a different explanation that was instead rebellious but also empowering.

I always really enjoy when I can find some connections between the classes I am taking here at Lawrence.

Boboshanti

Here is a short video explaining some customs and beliefs of the boboshanti in a Rastafarian village. In this video, there are many things that are in keeping with the Rastafarian traditions explained in our text, Rastafari: From Outcasts to Culture Bearers. Their entire lives are focused on getting back to the homeland that is Ethiopia. They consider themselves children of Africa and they believe that they must return to there. They desire equality and justice for all, which is a Rastafarian ideal stemming from the inequality and injustice they have faced for decades in Jamaica. Something that was striking about this group of, what the narrator calls the "most spiritually committed Rastafarians," is the fact that they wear turbans to cover their traditional dreadlocks.

The text explains that the dreadlocks have multiple levels of significance. Firstly, dreadlocks go against the social norms of beauty in Jamaica. It rejects the notion of skin bleaching or hair straightening and actually accentuates the nature of African hair. Also, dreadlocks go against the social norms of cleanliness and bathing because they appear matted, which in turn are thought to be dirty. The dreadlocks also emphasize the Rastafarian believe in all natural and organic living, because the hair is not being pulled or combed in unnatural ways.  The dreadlocks also signify fearsomeness and fearlessness because of their visual association with the Lion. Dreadlocks are seen as a spiritual and "mystical link between the Rastas and Jah... In this context locks are a kind of receptor or psychic antenna."  And finally, the dreadlocks are symbolic of the Babylonic Jamaicas unavoidable doom (Edmonds 59-60).

So why do these Rastas wear turbans to cover their distinguishing dreadlocks? Well, the answer is explained in the video. It is explained that turbans are worn because it is an ancient dressing that is worn by the people of Ethiopia. In the text, the dreadlocks were never explicitly linked to Ethiopia, except for the fact that they could be a "psychic antenna" between the Rastas and Jah or Selassie. I think that wearing these turbans are another way to connect to Ethiopia explicitly that is not accomplished through dreadlocks alone. Obviously these people are still following the dreadlocks tradition under their turbans, but this means that they value the physical connection with Ethiopia over the implications of wearing dreadlocks alone. Though the strength and defying of social norms is still present in their appearances, they value the idea of upholding an ancient Ethiopian tradition as well. They call themselves Rastas, so they have the dreadlocks like all other Rastas. But they also call themselves children of Africa, which is not what all the Rastas call themselves, so they use their appearance to reflect their strong connection to Africa by adorning themselves with turbans as crowns in the ancient Ethiopian tradition.

Kebra Negast

When reading the Kebra Negast, I was struck by a couple of things. First off, I was not expecting this to be such a narrative. I expected this reading to be way more like a scripture that was instructing all on what is right and wrong. There were a couple places where the story took a turn from straight narrative into a more preaching and instructional guideline on how to live your life, but there was a lot less than I thought there would be. Maybe this was because we did not read the whole thing. There could very easily be places in the entire book where there are explicit guidelines about the right and wrong thing to do, but in the section we read, it was more telling a story than anything else.

The other thing that struck me in this reading was the fact that Solomon actually tricked Sheba into sleeping with him. Throughout the entire reading, every person was raving about how great Solomon was. The merchant went to visit him and when he came back all he did was rave about Solomon until Sheba finally had enough and had to visit him herself just to see how great he was. But then, he tricked her into sleeping with him. When I was reading this, I got extremely confused. But then he had that dream where he realized the fault in what he did and he apologized and tried to make it up to Sheba. After reading that, I tried to think of reasons why Solomon would have been portrayed as so wonderful, yet he tricked Sheba. The explanation I came up with is that is showed someone making a mistake, owning up to it and making it right. It could be an illustration that everybody messes up, and that there are very extreme consequences if you do not apologize and ask for forgiveness in what you have done.

Where is the Love?

On page 76 of On Christian Teaching, Augustine writes,

"But since the human race is prone to judge sins not by the strength of the actual lust, but rather by the standard of its own practices, people generally regard as culpable only such actions as men of their own time and place tend to blame and condemn, and regard as commendable and praiseworthy only such actions as are acceptable within the conventions of their own society."

Augustine then goes on talking about how scripture only ever speaks of love and the only true way to interpret the scripture is to interpret it in a way that facilitates love. When reading, I couldn't help thinking of so many christian fundamentalists who only take the scripture at face value, and think that so many modern ideas are sinful or ungodly. I remembered this episode of the Tyra show where she had fundamentalist baptists on her show, and I feel like it fits into this blog topic. Here is a little bit of the interview on her show:

In her interview, the baptist lady and her family spoke of love many times, but to me, it seemed incredibly false. They believed that they loved homosexuals because they had the courage to tell them they were going to hell. Does that make any sense? I really don't think it does at all. Augustine writes about misinterpreting the scripture, and I, and also Augustine, think that is what this family is doing. Augustine writes

"And so it happens that if scripture enjoins something at variance with the practices of its readers, or censures something that is not at variance with them, they consider the relevant expression to be figurative." 

In this interview, these women are blindly quoting the bible and speaking out against gays while not giving any context to these quotes. Religion changes to fit society. It constantly is changing to account for the new ideas in and structures of social culture. So back when the bible was first written, things like homosexuality were not as widely present and accepted. But what Augustine is saying is that because homosexuality is present in our society, we should only look at seemingly anti-gay things in the bible as merely figurative, or ignore them altogether. This is definitely something that is not being done by the fundamental baptists.

In the same paragraph, Augustine then writes, "Scripture enjoins nothing but love, and censures nothing but lust, and mounds men's accordingly...It narrates the past, foretells the future, and demonstrates the present, but all these things serve to nourish and strengthen this love." Just listening to the things these fundamentalists are saying, one gets a sense that there is no love in what they are saying. They are so defensive and are filled with such rage and anger, and I don't think that is what religion is all about. And I commend Tyra for actually pointing out the anger that these women are displaying.  Just blindly quoting the bible with anger in your words is not in accordance with the scriptures. This is the modern age. Just love.

Reading the Bible: Now and Then

In the online article,"How to Read the Bible", the author talks about how there are two different approaches to understanding scripture. The first approach is a theological approach where the scripture is used to fit into an already established conceptual "blueprint" that is the bible. The approach is that we already know what the overall meaning of the bible is, and that we use certain passages of scripture to enforce that meaning. The second approach to reading scripture is what the writer deems a "smorgasbord approach." In this approach the Bible acts as a resource people us to answer questions or get advice pertaining to their life. In the first approach, there are many assumptions which we believe are true and we make the Bible fit into that. In the second approach, we actually believe that the scripture is a way for God to directly communicate with us and give divine advice.

In On Christian Teaching, Augustine discusses two types of learning. He writes that, "One consists of things which have been instituted by humans, the other consists of things already developed, or divinely instituted, which have been observed by them." At first read, these two ideals really did not seem to coincide with the article"How to Read the Bible", but after reading the extensive explanation Augustine gave for these two types of learning, they actually did seem to coincide to a certain degree. To me, they coincide on a more abstract level because Augustine was writing on a more abstract level in his work then in the online article.


Augustine explains that the scripture means nothing without a baseline knowledge of things, which coincides with the "blueprint approach" explained in the online article. For Augustin, we must know how certain things relate to the world to understand the metaphors or representations of these things in the scripture. We must have a baseline knowledge of numbers to understand the use of numbers in the bible, as well as we must have a baseline knowledge of music in order to understand musical references. He is saying that if we don't have baseline knowledge of certain things, the scripture will either have no meaning, or will lack the much deeper meaning it actually possesses. He also explains that all meaningful things are meaningful because humans decided they would be meaningful. Things become meaningful as a result of human institution. In reference to demons, Augustine writes, "They are not observed as a result of their influence, but they gained their influence as a result of being observed and recorded." He then explains that a writer choosing to write something in one language does so because it would mean something different if written in a different language. And "All these meanings, then, derive their effects on the mind from each individual's agreement with a particular convention. As this agreement varies in extent, so do their effects. People did not agree to use them because they were already meaningful; rather they became meaningful because people agreed to use them." He writes that signs are null and void unless accompanied by the observer's agreement. And the article is saying a similar thing with reference to the first approach to reading the Bible: If we do not have an underlying blueprint of what we think the Bible is really all about, than reading passages from it will have no meaning if not made into the building blocks in that blueprint.

Now, the second type of learning in Augustine and the second type of approach to reading the Bible may not be as similar as the first types, but I still think they go together nicely. Augustine writes, "Now those elements of human tradition which men did not establish but discovered by investigation, whether they were enacted in time or instituted by god, should not be considered human institutions, no matter where they are learned." He is saying that there are things man observes and views that were not his construction, but rather the construction of God or time (which all in all just wraps up into God). This intertwines with the second approach to reading the Bible because the people who take this approach really believe that these are the words of God and that we should interpret the Bible in just this way. We should look at it as God directly communicating with us, and we should take those words as advice to live a better life. Both these approaches view things as not man-made, rather they view them as God-made and we are just here to observe and study them.

For the last part of the blog post, we are to address whether these readings of the Bible are positive or negative. I firmly believe these are positive ways of doing things, and I believe Augustine agrees. At the end of his Book 2, he writes, "For what a person learns independently of scripture is condemned there if it is harmful, but found there if it is useful. And when one has found there all the useful knowledge that can be learned anywhere, one will also find there, in much greater abundance, things which are learned nowhere else at all, but solely in the remarkable sublimity and the remarkable humility of the scriptures." This means that Augustine believes we can learn many things outside of the scripture, but learning things in the scripture will give us the most meaning and clarity in our lives.

Psalm 131

When reading through the songs of ascent, Psalm 131 especially stood out to me. It did not stand out to me in length or plot, but stood out to me in the simplistic and beautiful way it was written. The simple Psalm reads: 

 

Lord, my heart has not been haughty, nor have my eyes looked too high,

not have I striven for great things, nor for things too wondrous for me.

But I have calmed and contented myself like a weaned babe on its mother--like a weaned babe I am with myself.

Wait, O Israel, for the Lord, now and forevermore

 

This psalm is just so beautiful! I think what is most striking is how content and static it is. Many of these songs of ascent have a strong emphasis on motion, pilgrimage, journey, etc. These songs were written about the long journeys the Israelites had to take to Jerusalem multiple times a year, and many of the psalms deal with hardships, danger, seeking protection from God, climbing the mountain to Jerusalem. But this psalm has no sense of motion and there is no looking back on a journey or anticipating a journey. I would imagine this would be something said before bed. We all must personally calm ourselves in order to fall asleep, and this psalm is reflecting the calm that one achieves with God. Many of the psalms we studied in class have been about hardships. Some psalms reflect how the Israelites believed God abandoned them and they are just pleading for him to come back and save them. There is a sense of unrest and wanting and dissatisfaction with their current states. 

 

 

But this psalm is different. The poet is completely content. They express how they are like a weaned babe when alone. There is still a sense of waiting for God, but it is expressed in the line, "Wait, O Israel, for the Lord, now and forevermore." The "now and forevermore" illustrates the stasis of the psalm. It makes it seem as though the poet, or anyone reading or singing it, will remain content and calm for eternity. There is still a sense of waiting for God, like in many other poems, but this is not an agitated waiting, it is a serene waiting. In many of the psalms we read, there is always talk of opposing forces, or those who are haughty non-believers that are always persecuting or hurting the Israelites. The victimization that the Israelites faced throughout history is reflected in these psalms, but this psalm makes no mention of that. Instead it is just a personal reaffirmation that what they are doing is right and that they are content and happy. I really liked this psalm just because it was simple, sweet and calming.

 

Wait, O Israel, for the Lord, now and forevermore

King David and Chinese Monarchs

Something that struck me during our class discussion on Wednesday is that in the Alter translation of the psalms, King David was seen as the seemingly the son of God. It was believed that he was descendant from God as was personally chosen by God to be the king of the Israelites. When we were discussing this fact, I couldn't help but be reminded of a class I took my sophomore about the arts of China and Japan. In this class, we learned that back when China was a monarchy, they believed in the "Mandate of Heaven" which stated that the emperor acted as the Son of the Heavens when in power.  The Mandate of Heaven was something that the Chinese used to legitimize their leaders by claiming that the leaders had divine approval, and that divine approval would either approve or disapprove of the Emporer's leadership. This concept struck me as very odd three years ago, and I think it was because we today are so used to the separation of church and state. It struck me as odd that these people would view their political leader as the Son of the Heavens. When we were discussing the psalms in class, I found that I was having the same feeling when discussing David. Up until this point, I ignorantly thought that the Chinese were the only to think that their rulers were divinely blessed to rule, but I was definitely wrong. But I guess it does make sense that other cultures would  believe that. The separation of church and state idea is such a modern concept. Thousands of years ago, everything was intertwined when it comes to the secular and sacred, so it makes sense that several cultures viewed their political leaders as sons of god.