Gospel of the Roach Lord: Refuting Divine Revelation

   "How do I know? The Bible tells me so!” This old song claims that the anthology finally edited in the third century of the Common Era is the word of God. If not dictated (like the Quran) it is divinely inspired with authority transcending human reason and experience. Many Protestants call the book “inerrant” and Catholicism's softer view declares it reliable in matters of faith and morals. Thus, if proof texts align, the Lord has spoken. Case closed. “How firm a foundation you saints of the Lord, / is laid for your faith in his excellent Word!”

This authoritarianism averts its eyes from the fact that many different books and collections claim like authority: The Pentateuch alone, The Book of Mormon, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the sutras of the Buddha, the Tao Te Ching, the teachings of Confucius, and many more. The Marcionites, for instance, accepted only a revised gospel of Luke plus some of Paul’s letters, and the Cathars accepted only the gospel of John. Even today, many Christians dispute the authority of the Apocrypha. Then there’s Bob Sims who led a congregation in Choctaw County, Alabama, around 1890, self-publishing his revelation that, since God’s was the only law, revenuers couldn’t touch his moonshine. World religion is no boarding house, but a smorgasbord. Only by ignorance or laziness can believers doubt that a religious text rests on no surer authority than their belief in that authority. Even if believers are sheep in the midst of an orthodox herd, they still affirm that herd. This leads us to the hard truth that revealed religious authority is ultimately human. Nobody stays with a church where they hear what revolts them.

    I said this once to a friend who is a minister, and she vigorously shook her head. She often preached things that her congregation didn’t want to hear. I take her point but had in mind a difference in degree that rises to a difference in kind. Of course, good preaching challenges a congregation with strong words. It may disturb their self-congratulatory egos, but egos secretly like to be disturbed. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be horror movies. A good preacher challenges and takes risks, but when this works best, it works much like Marine basic training. Old habits are broken down and replaced with better ones—or, in the case of the Marines, fewer and prouder. Living in Northern Virginia, I know ex-Marines who love the Corps, but they didn’t love every insult from a drill instructor in basic training. Unpleasant preaching can touch the heart. The rebukes of the Old Testament prophets were written down and recopied because people agreed with them. Their preservation rests on a cascade of human affirmation down the centuries.

    The fact that scriptures mutually disagree suggests that, like conspiracy theories of the Kennedy assassination, most (or all) of them are false, but this is not an inescapable conclusion. Disparate revelations may point toward one ineffable truth—or, more accurately perhaps, one range of human experiences of the transcendent. But, having acknowledged that, I’ll set it aside and float a premise espoused by many believers (if not by me), that there is only one true religion—Christianity, Islam, or whatever—and that its revealed scriptures are authoritative despite their having been revealed late in history and to only part of humanity. Given this premise, if it’s reasonable to reject any one revelation, all known revelations so far may be false, the true revelation yet to come (as the gospels were in Jesus' time). So let’s assume the one true revelation won't appear until, say, next year and will be be nauseating. This is a thought experiment, testing whether a religion authoritatively revealed in true scripture would float if its doctrines were repellent, insulting, vile, filthy, disgusting, and dangerous to the human race.

    My contribution to this experiment is Ralph the Roach Lord. Ralph (a sacred name humans must never pronounce) created the cosmos in the Big Bang and lost interest for thirteen billion years. He finally intervened in history to create cockroaches in his own image three hundred million years ago, which he saw was good but ultimately not sufficient. Millions of years later, he created humankind to be the cockroaches’ slaves, endowing them with reason—a debased trait—that they might better trash the earth and feed the elect. Ralph will soon reveal the One True Faith to Bags O’Toole, a janitor in Yonkers whose slovenly habits in his roach-infested basement apartment earned the Lord’s favor. Bags, all but illiterate, will nonetheless write a book of revoltingly bad verse, The Six Legs of Wisdom. Dictated in rhyming couplets by a nymph of Ralph who will humble herself to take on human speech, The Six Legs will celebrate the ineffable joy of feeding vermin, especially roaches, and the role of humans in the divine plan. Fundamental is the renunciation of all hygiene and holy war on exterminators, but the faithful are also called to rituals of submission. After every meal, like Bags, they must lie naked on dirty kitchen floors—the shrines of Ralph—smear garbage on themselves, and supplicate the holy ones to crawl up and feed. Only by this sacrament, called "The Sacred Tickle,” may humans—

    If I haven’t disgusted you yet, it’s not from lack of trying. My minster friend might very well fill her church while chastising her congregation for lack of charity—even get by with a passing comparison between their worst selves and roaches—but let her preach the gospel of Ralph and see how fast the church empties. No amount of waving gilt-edged scriptures or claiming divine authority, miracles, visions, stigmata, or ecstasies could gather worshippers around the Six Legs of Bags. Human gods, prophets, and avatars, si. Roaches, no. Preach Bags' Blattodea gospel on a street corner, and you might gather a crowd, but freedom of speech and religion won’t protect you from seeming insane. (I’m even wondering about myself for inventing him).

      Ralph is a non-starter. He lacks the sine qua non of any religion—attracting human worshippers, however strange, somewhere on earth. But, of course, if the purpose of religion is to be objectively true, why is that a problem? If God exists independently of what we think and is under no obligation to sell himself to our species—which may be true—our vote should be irrelevant. If revealed religion indeed reveals objective truth, not merely stories that please us, Ralph may be the stinking face of Lord of All, forever veiled from humanity.

    The existence of scripture is no guarantee—otherwise, Bob Sims the Alabama moonshiner and a hypothetical Bags stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Christ, Moses, the Buddha, and Joseph Smith in an infinite Pascal’s Wager. Whether collectively or as individuals, we create the authority scripture holds over us. Backs against a wall of ignorance, we accept spiritual guidance that we sense may be useful. 

    Tradition offers at least a wobbly compass here. Most people identify with only one religious authority, one flock they either follow or stray from. It’s often yes-or-no. But, for folks like me with religion in our DNA and a habit of research, it comes down to evaluating sources, which I used to teach in English 200 at Western Kentucky University. Pascal shot a blank when he said that the Bible is true because it's the world’s oldest book (we now have much older Sumerian texts), but he did have a point. One strike against Ralph (if he needs one) is his novelty. Every holy book is new sometime, but early adopters take special risks. If you want reliable religious guidance, you’re better off with something nations have found helpful over centuries, which narrows the field down to the foundational texts of a handful of world religions.