This is the third time this week I'm bringing up General Butt Naked because he's such an interesting character for me. He puts in sharp focus the cognitive dissonance I see in religion that I can't seem to work out.
I mean, I understand the concept of salvation, redemption by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That by accepting Jesus as your Lord and savior, your sins, both original and committed (derivative?) are forgiven. The outworking of God's eternal plan to deal with the problem of human sin, redeemed in Christ and will ultimately destroy all the devil's work, including suffering, pain, and death. (Though it is my understanding that God was the one that cursed Adam to return to dust and toil on the earth by the sweat of his brow and suffer while he is alive and so on) I've gone to enough church, read enough of the Bible, studied enough of early Christianity and European history to have a vague understanding of these concepts. I wouldn't call myself an expert or anything by any means, and I am always interested in learning new things, but I get the feeling that I have read and studied the Bible more than the majority of the Christians out there who predominantly just nod their heads at the pulpit every Sunday without giving their faith much thought. I guess that's the thing with cafeteria Christians who attend non-denominational churches. They practice on a superficial level so that they can feel like they have a monopoly on morality or something.
I know. That's a very cynical view of organized religion and I know that as individuals, most people aren't like that. I don't doubt or question other people's personal relationship with their gods. That's not my place. I just want you to know that it took me years of reflection, careful deliberation, academic research and soul searching to get to the spiritual desert that I currently reside in. The well of faith simply went dry for me.
I sometimes envy the religious. I imagine that it's a nice feeling knowing that you walk with the divine. That self-assuredness the faithful have and the strength that they draw from is something that I don't minimize. The world being full of doubt can be a frightening place sometimes. It must be comforting to know that God has a plan for you, everything around you. Kinda releases you from the responsibility of having to navigate your life. Jesus take the wheel. Literally. Sometimes I wish I could believe. That would make my life a lot simpler. But alas, that's just not the way I am wired. That's not how faith works, I'm afraid. I wish I bought into an obscure sect of illiterate desert dwelling goat herders with their cannibalistic rituals that propagated through the highways of the Roman Empire, but it's just not enough for me. I just can't suspend my disbelief for that long.
In a similar vein, I sometimes envy the blissfully ignorant, and the stupid. I am not saying that the religious are stupid or ignorant at all. What I am saying is that it must be nice to have everything laid out for you so simple and easy. To navigate one's life full of doubt, uncertainty, hyper-aware of everything around you is a difficult task sometimes. Especially to be surrounded by it 24/7, never letting up. They say ignorance is bliss, you know? That means to be hyper aware of every situation has to be some kind of hell. See what I'm getting at?
Anyways, I've digressed. I wanted this post to be about General Butt Naked, so I'll write a little bit about him now. His real name is Joshua Milton Blahyi (born September 30, 1971). General Butt Naked was his Nom de Guerre, or his "War name". He was a former leader for the Liberian warlord Roosevelt Johnson, who fought against Charles Taylor, the president/dictator of Liberia at the time. General Butt Naked and his soldiers either fought in the nude or in womens clothes because they believed that dressing in such manner gave them special powers and that they were immune to bullets. Why yes, they were high on drugs while they were in pitched gun battles. How did you guess?
He was a tribal priest. Initiated at age 11 and according to him, participated in his first human sacrifice. During the course of the three day ritual that followed, Blahyi says that he had a vision in which he was told by the Devil that he would become a great warrior and that he should continue to practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power. He came into power in Liberia by becoming the spiritual advisor to the former president Samuel Doe, as they were in the same tribe. He would regularly sacrifice a victim before battle, usually a small child, someone whose fresh blood would satisfy the devil. "Sometimes I would enter under the water where children were playing. I would dive under the water, grab one, carry him under and break his neck. Sometimes I'd cause accidents. Sometimes I'd just slaughter them." In January 2008, Milton-Blahyi confessed to taking part in human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat."
He claimed that his nakedness in battle was demanded by the devil and that he "met Satan regularly and talked to him" and that from the age of 11 to 25 he took part in monthly human sacrifices. That's monthly human sacrifices for 14 years. 168 months. Not to mention a sacrifice before every battle. In his account of a typical battle Blahyi claimed, "So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink their blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colourful wigs and carrying imaginary purses we'd looted from civilians. We'd slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, drunk yet strategic. We killed hundreds of people – so many I lost count." Blahyi also purported that during that period he had "magical powers that made him invisible" and a "special power" to capture a town singlehandedly, then call in his troops afterwards to "clean up". Some of Blahyi's soldiers – often teenage boys – would enter battle naked; others would wear women's clothes.
During the First Liberian Civil war he led a mercenary unit, many of whom were child soldiers, that was known as the Butt Naked Brigade. They were funded by Roosevelt Johnson and fought alongside the ULIMO (United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy) militia against militias led by Charles Taylor and Prince Yormie Johnson. ULIMO was loyal to Samuel Doe, who was killed by Prince Johnson. Charles Taylor eventually took control of the country.
Conveniently enough, when his side lost, or as his side was losing, he had a theophany in which Jesus Christ appeared to him as a blinding light and told him that he would die unless he repented of his sins. (Obviously not taking into account that he, like everybody else, will eventually die) He makes it to a refugee camp on Ghana, and at the camp. he makes confessions of his sins at a Church there, "had his life saved", and becomes a born again Christian. He has since become a preacher and the President of the End Time Train Evangelistic Ministries Inc. When he goes out to preach now, he says he sometimes encounters relatives of his victims. "I feel very bad, so bad", he said, but he insists it was satanic powers that possessed him in the past and he cannot be held responsible.
At least on a positive note, (more positive than a former warlord turned preacher?) he has since expressed willingness to be tried for war crimes at the Hague. He's not the only one that should be tried for war crimes in Liberia, as their civil war was a particularly bloody conflict involving child soldiers and rape squads and mutilation and all the horrors of war and then some, but I guess he has truly repented and is a changed man now. In January 2008 Blahyi returned to Liberia from Ghana and claimed before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia that between c. 1980 and 1996 he and his men were responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 people.
In the United States, Reverend Travis Beck and Pastor Robert Letner Jr., have begun spreading Blayhi's message of redemption and forgiveness. This has resulted in the flourishing ministry of the Trilateral Church of the South.
I guess his story is one of ultimate redemption and forgiveness.
But for you Christians out there. Would you consider his story inspiring? Could you forgive a mass murderer and a cannibal? I know that you don't have to forgive him, as you can't judge him. Only God can. But do you feel comfortable knowing that there is a place in Heaven for him? Are you looking forward to meeting him in the afterlife?
And if you are, are you also prepared to meet thousands of Nazis who wore a belt buckle with the inscription "God is with us" as they exterminated the Jews and the Poles and the Gypsies and 1 out of every 7 Russians among others? Who genuinely believed that they were doing God's work? Or the Spanish Conquistadors whose wholesale slaughter of the indigenous people of South America for the greater glory of God and the Spanish Empire? Or the hordes of Crusaders who burned and pillaged their way through the Middle East to get to Jerusalem for the glory of God?
And ladies: In a world full of rape squads, honour killings and flesh peddlers, do you believe that you will go to hell for an abortion? For using an IUD?
This is the cognitive dissonance that I'm having a hard time resolving. I like to consider myself to be a pretty decent kind of a guy. I'm nice to people, polite, helpful, kind, or at least I try to be.
To quote Homer Simpson: "I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?"
Besides, due to God's omnipotence, everything is predetermined, including who gets to go into the kingdom of heaven. Free will doesn't play into it at all. In fact, you can't petition the lord through prayer. It does nothing. You can't sway the lord in your favor. Not even the Pope can do that. According to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, God "freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass." Without the doctrine of predestination, God becomes a paradox. As in: Could God make a chili so hot that even he can't eat it?
Well? Could he?
Anyone can be forgiven. And mainly because forgiveness for our sins comes from God. I don't buy into a lot of mainstream Christian views of heaven and hell. I don't believe that bad people go to some eternal torment and I don't believe all good people go to heaven. I follow the scriptural doctrine that at some point everyone will be resurrected, judged, and the earth being restored to its original form, like the garden of Eden. I certainly don't believe everything is predetermined.