Percy Jackson and Human Beings

A few nights ago I picked up the first book in the Percy Jackson series, which is written by Rick Riordian. It's a good book if you're younger than I am, and probably cooler if you're a boy, but it was good enough for me to finish it in about three hours. And although I enjoyed this book, there was something about it that I didn't like... and couldn't quite shake.

For those of you that don't know, the Percy Jackson series is about Percy, the son of Poseidon. He's a demigod in present-day America, where all the Greek gods exist. They explain that the Greek gods move with the Western civilization (which is why Mt. Olympus is in New York). Percy asked if this means God exists, and someone tells him that God with a capital G is metaphysical, which is something totally different and isn't even related to the subject of the Greek gods. This makes no logical sense with the Christian God, but obviously this is a work of fiction and no one believes in Greek gods anyway.

The thing I had a problem with was a subtler message in the first book. Apparently demigods give off this aura that monsters can smell, so monsters come to them. Percy's mother, an amazingly kind woman, wants to hide Percy's scent as long as possible, so she marries this terrible man named Gabe. Gabe is abusive, cruel, dirty, and stupid. And the reason she marries him is because Gabe's scent is so human, it masks Percy's.

So basically, the ultimate human -- the person who is so human that their scent can cover a demigod -- is the worst kind of human being on the planet.

What does this say about human beings? That the more human you are the more terrible you are? Percy's mother is described as a different kind of person altogether. So the kindness aspect doesn't occur often in humanity.

I can find some truth to this in the knowledge that everything good in us comes from God. But at the same time, God made us in His image. The Ten Commandments we have to follow, the morals we must adhere to -- those are all things that make us more human, more like God intended us. The better we are, the more human we are, and the more like God we are. We are not more human if we are horrible people. We become more like Satan and less like how humans were supposed to be. And Riordian's message is in a children's book -- that the most human people are cruel and abusive, and that the kind people are totally unique. This presents such a terrible view of humanity that I wouldn't blame children to not want to be human, after reading this. If demigods are brave, and humans are evil, who wants to be a human?

But we should want to be humans. Because humans are who we're supposed to be. Sure, we can never be perfect. But we can work towards goodness, and in the end we will be resurrected and be made new and become like we were intended to be. But we won't be demigods or gods. We'll be human.

Anyway, that's what I got from this book. :)