Román Leão

Tag: christianity

  • 17–16 to 60: On Genesis, Pt. 2

    09-10.07.2026

    Even as a child, I rejected the idea of original sin, instinctively knowing better than to take the rap for something I hadn’t done. I knew, even then, that I would probably do enough stupid things in life to legitimately feel guilty for, there was no reason to front load that weight. I would later come to believe that the way of the spiritual warrior would be to accept one’s failings and move past them; learning, and changing, not bemoaning.

    The creator we meet in the Old Testament is, by admission, a jealous and vengeful god, a god that needs a nap, Sunday apparently not having been enough. Upon rereading Genesis recently, I recognized the whole Tree of Knowledge scene as what is most definitely was: a total set-up. As a former high school teacher, if there was something I did not want my students to mess with, or something that I thought might distract from the day’s lesson, I simply would not have it sitting in the middle of the classroom, unless it happened to be the lesson.

    What was it that angered Yahweh so much to see what He/She/Them surely knew was going to happen play out? Was it the fact that, as we were created in the image of the godhead, the creator recognized one of His/Her/Their own tendencies reflected back? Regardless, it all seems a little petty for an entity that just created the universe. Could it have actually been the bittersweet anger of a parent that knows their child must defy them at some point to grow beyond the nest? It seems like only yesterday the kids were a pile of dust.

    Can we really proscribe human frailty and psychologically-driven peccadillos to an all-being? I think we have to. That would certainly be part of being “all.” Of course there would be countless unrecognizable motivations that color a creator’s actions. God moves in a mysterious way, indeed.

    Another thing that stood out was that Adam was a straight-up snitch. When Yahweh comes walking down the garden path, Ad-Rock doesn’t hesitate for a second to throw his partner—and not unimportantly, the only other person to talk to in all of creation—under the bus. Could this be read as humankind’s sublimation of the corporeal in deference of the spiritual? Maybe. It could be that Adam had no real father figure to tell him not to be a tout. But I digress.

    In Genesis, our man Adam actually comes off as a little dim. It is Eve who has a healthy curiosity and nascent agency, and, to be fair, FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out) hadn’t been invented yet… whoomp, there it is!

    As far as getting kicked out of the garden, our whole concept of a garden is based on the environments that we have known, only not degraded. I would argue that the garden is all around us, and the sooner we start acting like it and treat it with due respect, the better off we—and the creatures we are supposed to be taking care of—will be.

  • 26–24 to 60: On Genesis, Pt. 1

    30.06–02.07.2026

    As I have been blessed with what could only be called a spotty memory (perhaps a learned coping mechanism, but I don’t really remember, so I guess it works). As I result, I can’t recall any of what my years of Sunday school and catechism actually taught. Over the years, this has led be to explore my own philosophical studies, which gradually wound their way back around to the books of the Bible.

    What struck me upon revisiting Genesis about 10 years ago, was how little of it has seeped into the general zeitgeist. I am pretty sure I would have been fascinated with the mention of a race of giants, the product of forbidden union between humans and angels. Hold on, could there have been allusions to Bigfoot in the Bible? I’ll make sure and circle back on that.

    When I wrote my second novel, Burn Your Starry Crown, I envisioned the creator as a distant CEO, the head of a Byzantine organization that hasn’t been seen around in years, but everyone fears could be back at any time. Whenever angels, members of the Upstairs Agency, referred to their chief, they used the term He/She/Them, a term I meant to indicate universal totality as well as poke a little fun at the pronoun culture wars that were raging at the time.

    The first thing that struck me upon rereading Genesis, was as God was first creating humankind in Genesis 1:26, it was written as, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” From the perspective of the second decade of the second millennium this seems to denote an inherent plurality in the creator, which to me makes perfect sense. He/She/Them surely embodied the original encompassing spirit, the OG, that Walt Whitman much later envisioned when he wrote in Leaves of Grass, “And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.”

    However, as anyone can tell you, it is no fun at all to hang out with people exactly like yourself. (Do not get me started on the white supremacists.) There is nothing like a living mirror to point out the things in your own personality that drive you crazy. As the creator must, by definition, embody every conceivable notion or state, can fallibility be off the list? Of course not. It is rude to think so.

    Fortunately, He/She/They quickly sees the remedy to what could have ended up as humankind’s eternal insufferability, at least from a godhead’s perspective; split up the prototype, it would certainly be more entertaining. And so we are, for better or worse.

  • 47–45 to 60: When the Saints Come Marching In

    09–11.06.2026

    Taking a break from the news and the eternal doomscroll really does a mind and body good. If it wasn’t for the mysterious bug that had cut down myself and my co-workers like summer wheat, I would have had a better chance to feel rejuvenated by our road trip. At least being stuck in low gear helped ensure that I wasn’t running from pillar to post with the missus like a rainforest version of The Amazing Race. I love her to death, but the woman doesn’t not know how to sit still.

    One thing I did have time for, and have been meaning to do for a long time, was to sign up for a course with ULC, the “non-denominational religious organization,” that ordained me back in the ’90s. All of the recent talk about Christian Nationalism, and the Dominionism preached by our Secretary of Defense’s pastor Doug Wilson, has found my thoughts toward faith and the teachings of Jesus become better defined in my mind. Maybe that’s these clowns’ purpose all along, but I am positive that they don’t think it is.

    Rushing down the Embarcadero to catch my boat home one evening a couple of months ago, I was confronted by a young, overeager evangelical who fell in quickstep with me, asking if I was a Christian. I was stopped in my tracks by the question, which is not conducive to making the ferry. I had to admit, that, “No, I do not consider myself a “Christian.” He proceeded to tell me that Christ died for my sins, and the usual litany of, well… litany.

    I had to stop him, and said, “Hold on, don’t get me wrong, I dig the rabbi. I try to follow his advice on the daily. It is these people that call themselves Christians and do not listen to a single thing the dude said that piss me off.”

    My candor stopped the young man, as suddenly as his question had stooped me. I continued on my desperate attempt to catch the ferry, but upon settling in my seat, I was kind of surprised by my own declaration. I was raised Catholic, your grandma’s weird, old country version of Christianity, which, don’t get me wrong, is one of the things I think it has going for it. I always loved the statues and the pageantry, which I strangely feel protective toward all of a sudden.

    Later that week, my sister and I were at a planning meeting at the Portuguese Hall, an old school immigrant society function if there ever was. If it wasn’t for half of the group Zooming in from parts unknown, it could have been a scene from 50 or 100 years ago. After bimonthly business was finished, the conversation drifted to whatever crazy thing the administration had said or done that day. As a joke, I asked, “What are we going to do when they make carrying the flag of Portugal in our procession illegal?” Ha ha.

    Wilson has called for one better. In his vision of a Christian nation, he would outlaw “public displays of idolatry,” meaning the very Catholic statues and parades that fascinated me as a youngster. This is the same pastor that was invited to preach at Hegseth’s Pentagon.

    One of the reasons the founders of this nation inserted an Establishment Clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was to avoid the type of religious infighting that tore Europe apart for generations. We now have a fundamentalist preacher, close to the levers of power, champing at the bit to start some shit.

    At the same time, TFG* has been beefing with the first American pope for doing what popes are supposed to do, i.e., advocating for the downtrodden, the immigrant, the peace makers. I admit that it had been years since I really paid much attention to what the various popes were up to, now all of a sudden, I’m seriously rooting for Chicago’s own Leo XIV.

    We unlikely theologians have got to stick together.

    *This Fucking Guy