A Terrible Human-Devouring God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two stories by Philip K. Dick ("Rautavaara's Case" and "Faith of our Fathers," both included in the collection Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, with an\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/a-terrible-human-devouring-god.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Terrible Human-Devouring God\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two stories by Philip K. Dick ("Rautavaara's Case" and "Faith of our Fathers," both included in the collection Selected Stories of Philip K. 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{"id":34822,"date":"2016-07-19T06:09:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T10:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=34822"},"modified":"2016-07-21T18:02:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T22:02:32","slug":"a-terrible-human-devouring-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/a-terrible-human-devouring-god.html","title":{"rendered":"A Terrible Human-Devouring God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Two stories by Philip K. Dick (\u201cRautavaara\u2019s Case\u201d and \u201cFaith of our Fathers,\u201d both included in the collection Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick<\/a><\/em>, with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem) explore alien gods and ideas of God. One contrasts the human image of Christ with the equivalent savior of plasma-based beings from Proxima Centauri. Whereas our human Christ offers himself to be eaten, intoning words from the Gospel of John, their Christ devours others. The other story envisages a world in which humanity has united under a Communist dictator whose true form is hidden from those he rules over.<\/p>\n

The stories are striking because they capture an element of God as terrible and terrifying, utterly unhuman, in a manner that one can still encounter in the Bhagavad Gita, but which is largely neglected in the Biblical traditions in their modern expressions.<\/p>\n

\u201cRautavaara\u2019s Case\u201d is particularly interesting because it is born out of Dick\u2019s own religious experience and views. It relates to and explores ideas of religious possession, sacraments, and cross-cultural comparative theologizing. I am planning to add it to the reading list for my course on religion and science fiction, which I am teaching in the fall.<\/p>\n

Have you read either of these stories? If so, what are your thoughts about their exploration of religion?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a> $\"\"$ <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"