Christ Legends by Selma Lagerlof - Nine out of 10

 Christ Legends by Selma Lagerlof

Nine out of 10

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof has won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909 - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature - “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings”, which this reader has had the chance to appreciate in some of her stories – The Silver Mine - http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-silver-mine-by-selma-lagerlof.html - The Musician - http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-musician-by-selma-lagerlof.html - and a few more, some even covered under Christ Legends, with notes available at the same address or at https://www.goodreads.com/

This reader has had some qualms about these Legends, given that on the one hand we should maybe appreciate what religion does for people, when it is inspiring acts of kindness, ascetic, self-sacrifice, magnanimity, bravery and virtues in general, but there is the dark side, the disastrous impact it can have, probably best exposed by the ultimate expert on Self Esteem – by the way, the man in the White House does not have self-esteem as some think, on the contrary he lacks it, for one has It walks with ease, does not need to boast (indeed that is for the Needy, weak) he or she has a relaxed attitude, knowing oneself and the value one has, without the desperately advertising and exaggerating it like the ‘very stable genius’.

Nathaniel Branden has written the classic Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/six-pillars-of-self-esteem-by-nathaniel.html - which we should all read, but for Christ Legends, more relevant might be his less known book, which is equally outstanding, Psychological Effects of Religion - http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/04/psychological-effects-of-religion-by.html - in which he details the overwhelming problems posed by faith – though in this opus he speaks mainly about Christianity and Catholicism in particular – from the presence of an Almighty figure, right from childhood, looking over the shoulder with a threatening, overpowering presence, ready to pounce, willing to commit one to hell in adulthood for masturbating as a teenager, the idea that this world is of almost no importance – when for those like me, it is the Only chance We have – and thus encouraging the faithful to skip it and wait for the Real Thing, Heaven and it is  Immeasurable, Infinite Delights…these would be just two of the issues remembered now by this reader…

In opposition, we would have the Expert on Religion, that appears to be the best we have in the present, Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God - http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-history-of-god-by-karen-armstrong.html - The Case for God - http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/11/note-6-on-case-for-god-by-karen.html - and a few other classics on this particular subject, who would convince even apostates like the undersigned that there is indeed A Case for God, for we must not read the texts as literam – such as the fools that are called Creationists – in fact, the illustrious Karen Armstrong mentions the damage they do, which appears to be greater than those outside the frame have managed to inflict – but see them as they have been intended- Myths, Messages from an age when storytelling and myths were at the center and the idea that God created the world in seven days – literally – is just as preposterous as other beliefs extracted from the Holy book – Eve as resulting from the Physical rib of Adam and many other Legends taken as Absolute Truth by the ignorant…

In fact, what is laudable in the literature of Selma Lagerlof – as seen by this atheist – is the fact that she may present a similar case to that made by Karen Armstrong, familiarizing readers with generous - magnanimous might be more appropriate- acts of kindness, that are paradoxically often ‘selfish’- in the words of Harvard Professor Tal Ben-Shahar, being kind is about the most selfish act, in that the good returns multiplied to make the generous earthling happier – such as the story of the man who is looking for fire at night, for his poor wife and child, and when he comes to meet aggressive dogs, they are unable to bark and though they put their mouths on his limbs, they cannot bite and when the man climbs on the sheep, they do not move and to make this phenomenon ever more Super Natural, he takes the burning coals with his bare hands, mystifying the shepherd who asks what kind of night is this …the shepherd will be able to See, only when he becomes generous and then the Full Magic is revealed as in what may be an epiphany and Angels are present everywhere, to the Glory of god some will say…

The other legend that has attracted the attention of this apostate is the one wherein Peter and Jesus have conversations in heaven -  albeit for the latter I am rather doubtful, for he is referred to as the Lord, after a while, making me doubt if I remember correctly the first passage and if this is that Holy Trinity concept of which I am not sure, with Jesus is the son of god, but they are all one and the same…or are they not – and Peter is quite upset, which is so much against the notion of Heaven and when asked repeatedly about it, he states that he had expected to meet with his loved ones, as is the basis of Paradise, but his mother is missing and we learn that in her life, she had been a miser, unwilling to give anything, hence, her place is not among the kind, magnanimous and the compassionate…

However, we might be – well, not you…me – to say that connections work in Eden – just like we used to say in the communist days ‘it is not what you know, it is Whom you know that matters’- for an angel is sent to get the mother of the nomenclaturist Peter, but when the messenger gets there, a few unfortunates try to cling to this hope of redemption, escape from hell, only to find that the mother of the saint is still lacking compassion completely and she throws away all, except one poor soul, that is still attached…the angel had some traction when there were many desperate in his load, but paradoxically, the more his weight is diminished, the less speed he has in his wings, and when finally the last condemned is viciously pushed by the vile mother, the seraphim seems unable to advance anymore and finally, Eden works better than worldly tyrannies, where the son of the apparatchik gets promoted – see the case of North Korea, where all are equal, but the son of the original Kim ruled and then his son…

There are two other awkward, nefarious, devilish aspects that affect the pleasure of the undersigned when reading religious texts and Legends – yes, the notion that the Holy book says one thing and the servants of the church do something else is familiar…do what the priest says not what he does – one would be ‘international’, the fact that evangelicals have been instrumental in putting Trump in the highest office – I will not even deign to elaborate on why this is hellish and he is The Chosen of Beelzebub, not the Lord – and the other atrocious, religion related fact is local and refers to the Demon that rules the church that holds some 80 or maybe 90% of the population, if many just notionally, in its hold and who travels in a…Maybach