Devil Pope and fear of Good

Now, this is going to seem like immature fare for a religion blog, but please bear with me:

devilpope
Originally uploaded by theologienne.

The Pope has devil horns! This is an unedited pic floating around on the Internet.

Okay, that's funny, especially to those who are suspicious of Benedict's promise (and who tend to be more skeptical of signs, like the recent appearance of Mary in a water stain). Incidentally, I like the Chicago archdiocese's reaction to the fervor over the underpass Mary - their spokesman said the image's importance "depends on the individual who sees it. To them, it's real. To them, it reaffirms their faith." Like so many things about faith, such apparitions should be valued based on what the individual believes and what she may need from that belief.

But this photo of the Pope made me muse on another holy-for-diabolical swap and on what such humor means about our perception of the Divine. In Columbus, Ohio, a church near a major expressway arranged an image of Jesus with a light shining on it so that Jesus' image in shadow is cast as high as the church roof. The looming, faceless image, arms outstretched, strikes many people as scary rather than welcoming or holy. Once some pranksters attached little horns to the structure that casts the shadow, so that the frightening image became one more usually associated with fear - a giant shadow of the devil. (Here's a pic of the back of the figure - I couldn't find one of the entire spectacle.)

jesus_of_columbus
Originally uploaded by theologienne.

Part of what makes these two gags so funny is the notion of portraying these paragons of holiness, Jesus and the Pope, as inherently evil. I think there's more to it than that, though. Absolute power - the power that God has, or that people believe the Pope wields over the church - scares people. It's impossible to understand a being who knows the future, knows everything you've done and loves you anyway. When we see a giant Jesus figure with devil horns, we might laugh because we're not entirely comfortable with the notion of absolute divine power - something about it seems a little sinister, untrustworthy.

Maybe this is why people who don't believe in God can have much more negative and threatening images of God than people who do. Absolute power, when you haven't learned to trust in the goodness of that absolute and in its interest in your own life, is a pretty scary thing. A conservative pope with inadvertent devil horns is a good joke for some Catholics, but at the same time, it ought to expose some of the worst anti-Benedict rhetoric. Think about it: we laugh at that picture because we believe he's good. If we trusted in his goodness not at all, there would be nothing funny about the picture above.