Wednesday, November 2, 2011

THAT UGLY BAT

I was prompted to find some information about bats after my son showed me a baseball hat with the picture of a bat and told me that he would like to purchase the hat from the website. After asking him why he would want to wear a hat with the picture of an ugly bat, I decided that I need to learn more about the ugly creature I have feared all my life. In my searches, I found some very thought-provoking, pro-bat information on http://www.wickedblog.com/. Are these things superstitions or are they real?

When I was growing up, the perception I had of bats was ugly, scary, nocturnal-flying creatures. I was told by my playmates that they are “duppies (another name for ghost).” This seems ignorant to me now, but that was my reality then. When I visited caves and saw bats flying around, they gave me the creeps.

Now that I know that dead people do not turn into bats, but are rather sleeping in their graves (Daniel 12:2). I see the ugly bats in a different “light”, although they live in the dark. Whenever I am impressed to do a study, I always want to know what the Bible has to say about the topic I am researching. As I often do, I went to my Bible as well as to the Internet.

Here is what I found: The only place in the Bible I found the name bat specifically mentioned is in Isaiah Chapter 2:20. However the bat is counted among a list of unclean animals listed in the Bible. If interested you may read more in Leviticus Chapter 11 and Deuteronomy, Chapter 12.

I also stumbled on this interesting comment: “In Biblical tradition, bats were believed to be messengers of Satan. The Puritans believed that if a bat flew close to someone, somebody was trying to bewitch them”, (www.pure-spirit.com).

Another website had this to say, “Much folklore around the world has cast the bat in a bad role. Perhaps the most familiar of this folklore to us in Western culture are the medieval witchcraft texts that described bats as familiars for witches and the old European lore which associated bats with vampires. Curiously, the old European association of bats to vampires occurred long before Europeans discovered the existence of the less common species of vampire bats in South America (the only continent where vampire bats are found). Also, note that the bat's "evil" reputation from those medieval texts clung to it far into the modern day, while cats, which got the same bad reputation in those texts, have since been redeemed and thrown in the "cute" category (going by popular generalizations, that is.) So, how did bats come to be seen as so "evil?" The prevailing theory seems to be that since bats are mostly nocturnal animals and would stay away from people, people simply were not familiar with these creatures, and often what is unfamiliar is misunderstood” (www.Symbolismwiki.com).

I just wonder if the belief I held about bats stemmed from the Europeans theory, since Jamaica only gained its Independence from Great Britain 1962. My approach to all of God’s creation is intrigue, amazement and appreciation, but I will still keep my distance from some of them.

Pauline Lewinson

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