“Funk”...what a strange word, right? In the “Call and Response” movie I saw on Sunday about human trafficking, the philosopher Cornel West explained what “funk” really meant. It stood for the muck and mire of life, the stuff that we all go through, whether we admit it or not. West explained that when people like Aretha Franklin or black artists referred to “funk”, it was actually “keeping it real.” When you’re knee-deep in the funk, you’re truly living life. You aren’t faking it, or skirting around it for your own convenience.
And with that, my respect for the word “funk” grew way beyond George Clinton songs.
We all have ways of explaining, or referring to, the funk in our lives. Religion is definitely big on explaining why funk exists, and how to deal with it. Sometimes, we can be a bit too rigid when it comes to telling other people how to deal with “the funk.”
In fact, that is how the titular “Flying Spaghetti Monster” originated.
For anyone who doesn’t know, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, aka FSM, is the creation of a man named Bobby Henderson, “as a satirical protest to the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. Since the intelligent design movement used ambiguous references to an unspecified ‘Intelligent Designer’ to avoid court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism as a science, this presumably left open the possibility that any imaginable thing could fill that role.”
Henderson filled that role with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and labeled followers of the FSM as Pastafarians (spaghetti, pasta, get it?) - which I have to admit, is an ingenious name. I’ve even seen “Flying Spaghetti Monster” car ornaments that spoof the Christian icthus and the Darwin “fish with legs.” Although Henderson said that he had no problem with religion, just when religion was posed as science, the FSM has become a humorous rallying point for atheists, agnostics, and religious skeptics. They regard pirates as absolute divine beings, and the original Pastafarians.
The idea is that if people are going to be ambiguous about religious matters, like Creationism, and yet insist upon it as truth, then you could really make up anything and insist that it’s important, if you make it vague enough. It is related to the “God of the gaps” problem...if something is beyond human understanding, attributing it to God is not the smartest thing to do. For instance, the God of the Bible states repeatedly that He wishes to be known to us...so simply giving God credit for all the "unknown" stuff is missing the point.
I hope I didn’t lose everyone just then! Religious diversity, on the whole, is a good thing. I have encountered the Flying Spaghetti Monster on two accounts: one from a hateful atheist that made no bones about belittling all religious belief, and an old friend who professes to be a Pastafarian. I know full well that their stance pokes fun at my personal beliefs. But you know what? I dished it out pretty good in the first instance, and in the second, well, I’m not about to let religious differences affect a friendship. It’s pettiness like that that invites ridicule in the first place!
I say all this to point out that in my past, I’ve been in places and situations where the slightest religious diversity was either frowned upon or shied away from. Yet in my life, especially since moving to California, I’ve seen that not every person is white, has grown up in a middle class home, has two married parents, has grown up in the Christian church, and so on.
Life is richer when you walk alongside others who came along different paths. From the followers of Jesus to the Pastafarians who observe International Talk like a Pirate Day, we all find ways to deal with the funk. I tend to think that the best way to deal will reveal itself in the lives of the people who follow it.
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