The Oresteia: How do the Furies become the Eumenidies?

In the Oresteia, the furies are monsters that are gods, but yet are denied their place as gods. They are hideous, and delight in death, destruction and torture. They have nothing better to do with their time than hunt down patricides and matricides regardless of the justice of their actions. However, in return for their ceasing to hunt down Orestes, they are given a place in the city of Athens, and become the Eumenindes, rather than the Furies. So how does their being given a place in the city turn them from being the Furies into the Kindly Ones?

The Furies are just what their name implies—the goddesses of fury. So in asking what place the Furies have in the city, one is actually asking what role fury itself ought to play in society. Fury has a bad reputation, being the thing that has spurred lots of unpleasant events. Fury, however, can be quite useful if used properly. For instance, fear of vigilante justice, or fury, helps to keep the crime rates down and justice rates up.

The Furies, when acting without an aim, were almost exclusively destructive. Fury that is not aimed in the right direction is like a gun shot straight in the air. One can rarely predict who it will hit, but innocent people usually get hurt. Unfocused fury is bad for society.

Fury that is aimed at promoting justice and protecting the city, however, is good. It has a strong restraining effect on crime. If criminals know that the only thing that could happen to them is that they could get caught by police, they are a lot more likely to do criminal acts than if they know that their victim might have a gun, and might shoot them, or that some random vigilante might come after them.

When the Furies are not given a place in the city, they will show themselves as a somewhat random destructive force. When, however, they are given a place in the city, they act as a form of vigilante justice, adding to the power of the law, and also providing a reason for the law to stay just. The Furies become the Kindly Ones.

Logs, anyone?

Something I have been thinking about lately is what to do with new believers who just don't quite get it yet. How do you tell someone that, quite honestly, that they are living in sin, especially when they don't seem too open about taking advice or admitting that they might be at fault? How do you tell someone that they need to stop yelling at others, especially non believers, for the specks in their eyes, when they have a log or several in their own eyes? How do you speak the truth in love, letting them know that you've been there too, and that this doesn't mean rejection from yourself or from God?

In the Epistles, Paul and the other writers were not afraid to be blunt, and even harsh. They sharply rebuked the churches for their gross misbehavior, and the churches responded by shaping up (at least as far as is made clear in the scriptures). Part of me wants to say that the risk is too great, that they are too used to being hurt to take being repremanded, but then I look at scripture, and wonder if our society has made us cowards, and if people will take being repremanded better than we fear.

I also think that we have a tendancy to play down the import of helping others to grown in their walk with Christ. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we have the responsibility to help our sibs. It is not just our comfort or discomfort at their actions that is at stake, but their very souls, and eternal future. What if, becaus of our silence and cowardice, they are saved only as through the fire, and live a wretched life here on earth? Is that really of less consideration than that they might get mad at us?

This is not to say that care and discression should be taken when dealing with such things. It is only to say that such things, ought, in fact, to be dealt with, and in a timely manner. Which, I'm afraid, is much easier said than done.

How does Mark illustrate the importance of proper desires properly prioritized?

Throughout the book of Mark, Jesus continually rebukes the people, the Pharisees, and even his disciples for their wrong desires. He offers them eternal life, and they want party tricks. One desire that reoccurs a lot is a desire for physical healing. This is a good desire, but they focus on it to the exclusion of what else Jesus has to offer. They are so caught up in trying to be perfect on the outside that they completely miss the fact that they are rotting on the inside. The Pharisees focus so much on the law, trying to avoid even coming anywhere near to breaking it that they loose all sense of perspective. In the process of trying to be good, they become evil. They blew their desire for external goodness out of proportion, and their good desire made them bad. Similarly, the people desire healing for their bodies, but in the panic to get external deformities fixed, they miss their internal deformities and end up with whole bodies and lost souls.

Jesus is continually fighting this predisposition in those around him throughout the book of Mark. He points out that nothing is gained by getting the whole world if it costs you your life. He attacks the Pharisees as whitewashed sepulchers, pretty on the outside, and rotting on the inside. When the paralyzed man is lowered through the roof for him to heal, he starts out by forgiving the man’s sins. That was more important than solving his physical problems, although Jesus did that too. When the Pharisees are trying to get after Jesus for breaking the Sabbath when heals the man with the withered hand, he points out that it is more important to do good than to follow the minuscule bits and pieces of the rules that they have made up. Even though Jesus is trying to pound this point in, nobody seems to really get it until after his death and resurrection. They get that he is the Christ, but they have no idea what it would mean for him to save the world, or even the Jewish nation. They never seem to get past the physical realm to see into their spiritual brokenness that the Lamb came and was sacrificed to mend. It becomes clear through the epistles that they eventually do get it, and this becomes a major theme of the whole New Testament.

Well, having dial-up internet is not very good for my poor blogs...*sigh*

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and a happy New Year. I know I did. It is so lovely to be home with my family. It is, as per usual, rather odd getting used to living as part of a family unit, and having my decisions effect other people more than simply who gets to go to lunch with me. Ah well, I guess that is part of life.

I am hoping to be able to write my torrey term paper before I get back to school. I am rewriting my paper from last semester, which was on the similarities and differences between Machiavelli's ideas in The Prince, and Thrasymachus's ideas in Plato's Republic. I am going to be exploring how Machiavelli's ideas of justice fit into the dialoge in Republic as a whole, and which character speaks for Machiavelli. That should be fun.

Well...I was gonna write more, but sleep is calling me....