Since Heaven's Gate opened to let its faithful find their spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet, I've been wondering about human beings and what makes them believe.
Clearly the Heaven's Gate folk believed in something, something strong enough to die for. So did Joan of Arc, countless other less famous Christian martyrs, numberless dead in World Wars I and II and the men, women and children that the Rev. Jim Jones lured off into the Jonestown death camp.
All this indicates (to me, at least) that it doesn't matter so much what one believes in as it does that one has faith. The question, it seems to me, is not in accepting a faith, but in picking the right one.
I think it also is a matter of life and death as to who the particular messiah is that makes the faith distinct.
It strains credulity, for example, for the Heaven's Gate folk to have so carefully packed their bags and carried change for their celestial journey. What did they expect? That UFOs accept U.S. coins? That the money was needed for carfare? Or why did they all wear the same traveling clothes? Were they going to be reconstituted on the spaceship with their clothes on?
And why did they all buy Nike sneakers? Has Michael Jordan gotten even further on air heels than we thought he had?
Jokes aside, they apparently had implicit faith in the directions from their leader, no matter how balmy, and they followed them to the letter. The fact that they all carried out the disposal of their lower being in the same way only indicates to me that if enough of your fellows do something, it becomes acceptable and the norm. No one seems to have paused to reflect that the rest of the world might have been right while they were wrong. Being possessed of absolute faith and surrounded by others who have the same faith makes this difficult, if not impossible.
Almost no one at Jonestown rebelled. No "good" Germans (except perhaps Herr Schindler) turned up to declare Auschwitz terribly wrong.
To you and me (or at least to me) Heaven's Gate makes no sense, but then neither does being burned at the stake--as was St. Joan. The age of that faith seems to have passed, to be succeeded by another. Now we live in a world curiously divided between those who desperately want to believe in something--sometimes, it seems, anything--and those who cynically doubt everything.
It's also curiously an age that seems more intent on debunking everything from John Wayne to Albert Einstein. Wayne, his latest biographer tells us, far from being a Green Beret, was a draft dodger and a not very sincere super-American. Einstein was a lousy father and a terrible husband, even if he did lay out the General and Special Theories of Relativity.
We seem to need to believe that all leaders are flawed; obviously they are, or they wouldn't be human. Most causes have been corrupted, and cynicism is the only faith in which to have faith.
For instance, despite the testimony of those who were there and saw it, some people still doubt the Holocaust. They don't want to believe it because it is too awful to contemplate, I suppose. What one cannot comprehend, one cannot hold to be true.
These doubters are those who want to revise the history of the past three-quarters of a century. They would like us to forget that the whole middle part of our lifetimes was a struggle between rationality and a blind faith in totalitarianism, whether it be Communism, Nazism or Fascism.
But both Heaven's Gate and the mad little man from Austria should be lessons for all of us.
People want to believe in Heaven's Gate or a super race because it is far easier to have the uncertainties of life made certain and easy than to figure things out for one's self. Apparently, all you need is a little charisma.
Ah, that it were that simple. In an uncertain universe, so it seems to me, there are only two constants: change and doubt.
Change is what makes life interesting, if uncertain, and healthy doubt helps to do away with charlatans and con men (and women).
A third rule to follow may be that nothing in this world comes easy. If it does, then beware. Someone is trying to lift your wallet.
I know that those who believe will doubt my doubt, but I stand by it.
Finding true personal faith is not easy, and it is especially not easy in a world as confused and intricate as the one in which we live.
The truth is that the truth is very difficult to find. One should be very wary of those who would make us think that it is not. Be they David Koreshes or Jim Joneses, men (or women) with easy answers are not to be trusted.
But yet, alas, they are, even unto death.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Saratoga News.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, April 23, 1997.
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