The War: Essence Versus Existence

The War: Essence Versus Existence --Gil Prost

Within the mind of every person there exists an internal conflict from which no one can escape. Peter called it "a war against the soul" ( I Peter 2:11). Winnebago sages visualized it as a struggled between the behavior of the left arm and the behavior of the right.

Paul visualized it as a conflict between two kinds of law systems, saying: "For in my inner self I joyfully agree with God’s law. But I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body" (Romans 7:23 --Holman).

In this verse, the dual mind-body nature of human existence is expressed by Paul as a war between "the Law of the mind" structured in the unconscious mind or "inner man" and the "law of sin which is in the parts of my body," "the subjective organ by which the individual falls under the law of sin." Together they constitute the general laws of being and human existence. Together they constitute the general laws of ESSENCE versus EXISTENCE.

To my surprise, I discovered the true nature of this struggle was made explicit linguistically in the Miccosukee language. Let me explain.

It surfaced the day I asked my Miccosukee informant, "What is your word for 'sing'"? This was followed by asking for the word for 'dance'. To my surprise, I discovered he had naturalized singing and dancing by removing such actions from the sphere of culture, intentionality, and freedom, and placing such acts in the sphere of nature, the field of material necessity and stimulus-response behavior.

This reductionism was a clear manifestation of their rejection of God as Provider. The Miccosukee were using the material laws of necessity described by Paul as the "law in the parts of my body" to overthrow the "Law of the mind."

This they did reducing singing and dancing, cultural forms expressed in the sphere of culture, to mechanistic forms expressed in the sphere of stimulus-response behavior in nature. They were attempting, through magic, to prod and compel Nature to be their Provider.

This they did by using the physical members of their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, mouth and vocal cords to wage "war" against "the law of God". To relieve their existential anxieties, they relied on the physical members of their bodies to sing and dance, believing that such performances could compel the laws of nature to serve their basic needs and desires.

This shift from singers and dancers in the sphere of culture to performers of magic in the sphere of nature manifested itself linguistically in a replacement of -ek culture verb margins with -ak nature verb margins.

By reducing the inner-self to a body-thing represented by the syllable -ak, the Mikasuki were guilty of replacing Divine Meanings attached to the cultural forms of singing and dancing with meanings which "belonged to the people." The body and its parts were now directed by the "law of sin." They now served a function. That function was magic.

This shift from CULTURE to NATURE is illustrated in the chart below where the inherent meanings of singing and dancing are reduced to "instruments of unrighteousness" which the Miccoshkee used to compel the environment to act according to every desire desires.

Discovery of this shift in meanings from CULTURE to NATURE was revealed to me, the outsider, when I asked my informant for the word dancing. I was surprised when he gave me talwak. The -ak verb margin as illustrated in the above chart immediately informed me that the Miccosukee, like the Hopi and other North American tribes, did not dance for pleasure. They danced as a means for compelling Nature to provide for their needs.

Then when I asked for the word which symbolized singing, my informant gave me hopaanak rather than hopaanek. By failing to package form and meaning-content right, the concepts had lost their inherent meanings. Their meanings now "belonged to the people."

Like the Hopi chief who declared, "I knew I was not dancing for pleasure, but to help with the crops," the Miccosukee sang and danced, not for pleasure, but because they believed singing and dancing to be part of a natural order through which their existence was maintained and enhanced.

Though they no doubt derived pleasure from singing and dancing, their primary functions, as manifested by the -ak verb margin, was to stimulate the elements of nature to satisfy some need, like the need for rain and success in hunting.

It represented a mechanized version of the Christian concept of prayer. Instead of prayers asking God to intercede on their behalf, there was the magic of singing and dancing to affect the laws of Nature, laws which they believed could be tilted in their favor.

Miccosukee singing and dancing must therefore be interpreted as material events in Nature rather than as cultural events in freedom as manifested by the presence of -ak verb margins in the words talw-ak 'dancing' and hopaan-ak ‘singing’. This shift from -ek verb margins to -ak verb margins provide empirical linguistic evidence that the “naturalization of human actions --the treatment of certain human actions as if they were an integral part of physical determinism” is real.

Semantically, I refer to such a reductionism as ETIC DIVERGENCE, the replacement of a Divine Meaning with a meaning which "belongs to the people." For the empiricist, such a phenomenon does not exist. Yet the semantic evidence falsifies the claim.

The Miccosukee clearly suppressed that voice of the "inner-self" which says: "This is the way; walk in it." Since many of the culture forms used by the Miccosukee were shaped by the forces of nature, i.e., the "elements of the world" (Col. 2:8) many of their traditions and customs simply did not "accord with Christ."

Life-ways Ruled by Existence

Upon discovering that the Miccosukee (Seminole) had naturalized the cultural forms of singing and dancing, I purchased a copy of Frances Densmore's Seminole Music. According to Densmore, there were:

"Songs for bringing a child into the world,"
"Songs connected with the treatment of the sick."
"Songs for success in hunting". "The night before a hunting expedition the Seminole (Miccosukee) sing certain songs which are believed to make the animals 'feed close' and more easily found by the hunters. ...The songs for success in hunting are without accompaniment and are sung in succession."
"Songs for success in ball games." To have success in a ballgame, "It was the custom for the women to sing all night before a game, and the men used a rattle and drum. The friends of one group of players danced in a long line, one behind the other, a drum fastened to a strap over her shoulder." The function of dancing and singing all night before a game of ball was to "make the ball Invisible."

Among the Jívaro of Peru, one could not be a successful gardener without the help of "earth mother" whose name was Nungui. It was the magic of singing songs that compelled "earth mother" to push the crops up through the ground. A typical song sung by the women gardeners would go like this:

I am a woman of Nunguí Therefore I sing,

So that the manioc will grow well. For when I do not sing,

There is not much production.

I am of Nunguí.

Therefore I harvest faster than others.

Whereas the rain dance was common to native American tribes which lived in the dry Southwestern regions of the country, the Miccosukee who lived in a different environment, an environment where the annual precipitation is around 54 inches per year, there existed no self-felt need to stimulate the elements of Nature to send rain. On the other hand, each tribe in the Great Plains had a particularly rain dance to stimulate the clouds to send the rain that they desperately needed for survival. Many reservations in the Southwest still perform this ritual.

War Against the "Inner Self" and the "Law of the Mind"

Next, I discovered that many of the Miccosukee resisted classifying themselves as being "sinners." When I asked my informant "How do you say: I sinned," his reply was: "Cha-shapahkom." His answer shocked me. I expected him to use the pronoun -ele.

By using the pronoun cha-, my informant had positioned himself in the sphere of nature, the sphere of zero accountability. Just as he had classified sinning and dancing as material events in Nature, he refused to classify sinning as intentional acts. Instead, sinning was classified as being a mechanistic response to a stimuli. Sinning was classified as a non-intentional act, as was a "mistake" that just happened.

The act of "deliberating sinning after receiving a knowledge of the truth" (Hebrews 10:26), an act that had real consequences, could simply be rejected from by reducing oneself to a body-thing in nature. By positioning himself in nature, my informant had rejected what it meant to be a transcendent being positioned in the sphere of freedom and accountability

I immediately asked him if one could say shatapahkon-ele. He sheepishly answered "yes." Before me sat someone who found it difficult to accept the fact that he was a "sinner." I was amazed at how easy it was for a Miccosukee to avoid accountability. It could simply be done by positioning oneself as a body-thing in the field of nature by replacing the -ek verb margin with -ak, and by replacing the subject pronoun -ele with the subject pronoun cha-.

Convictions

People who use singing and dancing as a means to stimulate the laws of nature to work on their behalf, need to repent less "they be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death" (Revelation 21:8).
If a Bible translator were to translate the word 'sing' in the phrase "one will sing, another will teach, ..." (I Cor. 14:26) as hopaan-ak, rather than as hopaan-ek, the Miccosukee reader would conclude that the apostle Paul was advocating the use of magic rather than prayer because God could not Provide.
Form and meaning-content must be packaged right lest its inherent meaning be lost and transferred to the people who would use the new meanings "to suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18).