Late getting to this but since Ben Shapiro echoes my own thoughts about it I want to gert that much recorded. Nobody else said anything along the same lines but Shapiro opened his show a couple nights ago with a remark about biblical proportions or some such terminology and I perked up my ears. The first thought I had when I heard about the rain and mud out at the B urning Man festival was, Oh God is putting them through His judgment. And I watched a lot of videos after that to get a sense of what was going on and how everyone was taking it.
A muddy mess, the desert playa or alkali flats as my father used to refer to them, turning into a squishy mess with the sonsitency of peanut butter. Pelple tying plastic bags around their showes to get through the sticky stuff that seems to have an appetite for shoes, sucking them off and swallowing them up if you aren't careful. Cars would get stuck in the stuff so nobody could leave until it dried out enough for that. Most attendees made the most of it, some even trying to celevrate it as a part of the event itself, continuing the tone of revelry, but there were a few who worried about being stuck there for a long time. Although some who wanted to leave early had a problem getting out, those who were going to sty until the end anyway had dry enough conditions for the usual exodus when the time came.
Not God's judgment on a scale of biblical proportions but yes I'd call it God's judgment. A rare event to be rained out on the normally hot dry playa, and rained out in a way that made leaving impossible for a while, but more to the point, made it necessary for most of the entertainment to shut down. You don't want to leave electrical cors out in the wet so music had to stop and many other things just got to o soggy to continue. That's probably the manin judgment part of this. I'm sure some were able to continue happy enough but a lot of it just wasn't there any more. The event is of course known for its sex and drugs and that didn't have to stop witht he rain and mud. But I c would think the shutting down of the ;entertainment and probably the destruction of some of the art had to take a toll on the fun.
Of course nobody repented at the judgment of God, and such interference with the sinful revelries of fallen humanity cetainly suggetss that judgment to my mind, a pretty tame judgment of course, nothing life threatening, just a dampening of the festifvities and an alarming retstriction on movement for those for whom it mattered. I imagined many ossible worse scenarios, the stranging continuing a long time mostly. They'd run out of food, the toilet problem would get worse, some camps would be completely inoperable so people would be doubling up in uncomfortable ways. There could be mdical emergies and so on. But this is the modern age and we have helicopeters that could deliver food and even airlift people out if necessary. And so on. But still, it's God's judgment, that's what it is. He's saying to these people who deny Him in this loud obnoxious way every year, I'm here and I'm the one in charge, heads up.
So I was happy when Ben Shapiro made the same connection although his emphases were a bit different. Nobody else saw God as the bringer of rain and discomfort to the event. I suppose nobody there noticed, but maybe someonedid. Maybe we'll hear about it late
Later: I've always wondered what exactly the burning of an efigy of a man is supposed to mean. Wha'ts the symbolism. I suppose I'm naive, maybe it's obvious but I just don't get it. And why is everybody so happy when he goes up in flames? I mean the first symbolic meaning that occurs is that humanity itself isbeing trashed. And that's more or less how Ben Shapiro read it. But it doesn't seem likely that the "burdners" see it that way. but how do they see it? Mayb nobody really knows? r.
Later: DForgot to mention that people could walk out. It wasn't an easy slog through the gooey mess but the distance to the nearest town is only a few miles so it's quite doable and some did it. So even in the worst cast scenario most could get out that way, unfortunately having to leave vehicles and anything else too large to carry behind, but I suppose they could come back for those things later. Anyway, the situation was never really impossible, just difficult.d Also, almmost forgot this too, some behicles are able to traverse the muck, emergency vehicles of various sorts and so on, not able to carry many out but could bring in supplies and carry a few out. ots of them could carry more out. There really were a number of options possible, not comfortable options but options.
Find myself musing further on this, remembering that a beautiful double rainbow showed up at the scene at one pint, a remeinder of the rainborw God sent after thew Flood as a promise that He would never bring a flood on the earth again, a token of His love to humanity, even tghe fallen humanity of this fallen world, of which the Burners are a rather pointed symbol. Yes God loves all us burners and sent salvation to us, His Son who came to die in our place. He brings judgment on sinful nations too, but it's mostly meant to be a reminder that He's there and we can still turn to Him. Unfortunately most of us miss the message. Once we're saved, or for those who have an appreciation of the bible, we can see His hnand in such things as the mud at Burning Man, but most of them would be blind to it, as even us saved ones once were.
Friday: Jan Marell's radio show today is about the end itmes as it often is, which led me to reconsider the effigy of the burning man as a symbol of that last days finale when the earth will be consumed in fire. The Flood was the first great worldwide judgment of God, but the final judgment will be by fire. I'm sure the festival attendees have no such idea about their burning mascot but it certainly does suggest that freom a perspective above theirs. Every yhear they come together in a celebration of fallenness, though that too wouldn't be their conception of it, fallenness to an intensity we don't normally experience in one place at one time, sin to the max. Well not all sins fortunately, but a celebration of sin nevertheless. Kind of the Sixties in microcosm, which I've often thought of as the Great SinLiberation Movement, all of those liberations rolled together. And the timing is
woops, lot the thread, drat. timing. Intense week of godless humanity celebrating themselves capped by an image of humanity being burned to a crisp. Hm.
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