Patience

 

Seated Male Figure with Folded Hands, drawing, Edouard Vuillard (MET, 1995.270)

 

 Patience in its most complete sense is the hardest virtue. It is the hardest to learn. Godly patience is, I think, something that very few ever learn well.

There are a related series of concepts in Judeo-Christian religion that today for most people sound positively medieval. These concepts manifest in many forms: the denial of the flesh, circumcision both literal and spiritual, the chastisement of the flesh. Opposition to the desires of the moment in the name of a higher good. These concepts are set against the whole zeitgeist of our civilization currently, which is that the satisfaction of desire is the goal of life.

That is a very convenient ideology for a corporate consumer civilization to have. It is the mainstream ideology of today.

The fact that the biblical concept of self-denial or desire-denial is expressed in many different concrete forms can tend to hide, for superficial readers of the Bible, that all these different practical examples relate to basically the same thing. That same thing is loyalty to and love of G-d even against your own desire. Whether you are taking a knife to the foreskin, refusing to do something you want to do because it is against the Commandments, or as some Catholics do (and I have done in the past,) literally beating your back with a whip, it is all connected to the same thing.

There is nothing in the Bible against a good meal, or sex with your WIFE, or other forms of enjoyment within proper bounds. The religion of the Tanakh is only an ascetic religion within certain limited contexts. The core concept is that you oppose your own desires when they come in conflict with your more important commitment, obligations to and loyalty to Almighty G-d. That is what is being talked about here. I will deny my own will and desires in the interest of furthering what is right, and what is obedient to the G-d I love.

To give a practical example: you sit down to a really lovely and tasty meal. That's great, enjoy it! You eat until you practically pop and become obese. That is not as good, because it is not good for you. It is putting food in a place in your life where it should not be. A lovely glass of wine, sure (though I have not drank alcohol in probably a year or more.) Drinking until you are drunk, that is not good for you and not good for others because it reduces your self-control. However, as much as following the Law is beneficial to yourself and others, the more important matter at hand is not that obeying the Law is good for everyone. It is that G-d commands it; your loyalty to and love of G-d is what is at stake here.

It is not for nothing that the 23rd Psalm, the Psalm that has been perhaps the most significant Psalm in my life, states:  

"Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."

The rod and staff are used to discipline and direct sheep. Now people being sheep has a negative connotation nowadays, but nothing of the sort was meant at the time. It is not the common vulgar man who is comforted by the Lord's direction and discipline. In Jewish parlance it is the mensch, the "real human being." The godly human being. The man who loves G-d more than he loves his own will and desire.

All this is connected to another idea in the Bible which tends to be underemphasized or not spoken of at all in modern churches. That idea is idolatry. Huge amounts of the Torah consist of passages dealing with idolatry, which must not be construed as only bowing down before idols of stone and wood. Following your own desire in contradiction to G-d's will is inherently idolatrous: you are placing something else in the primary position in your life rather than the One that belongs there.

Now many of us, and I myself, have practiced self-denial because we want to. I used to have a pretty toxic relationship with food, in some ways still do, but I feel good measuring out a smaller portion size. This is a form of self-denial I willingly engage in at least sometimes. Probably any sincere believer has at times wished to enact penance on his or herself in recognition of their sins. Many forms of self-denial that were initially difficult become joyful with practice.

This is very important, but it is also in a sense circumcision of the flesh with training wheels. The very hard form is patience. Putting up with something you do not at all want and may in fact hate because it is the most righteous thing. The most obedient to G-d. I am not good at patience.

Now, in a sense obedience to G-d is super simple: obey the Commandments, obey the laws expressed in the Torah. That is all G-d truly demands of us. If He had demanded more, He would have said so. HOWEVER, I generally know when a course of action is not what G-d would prefer. And when I want to do what G-d does not prefer, that is where patience comes in. That means I suck it up and do the better thing even if it feels unpleasant. See, modern people are governed by how something feels. I remember a quote from one of the Star Trek movies or TV series where Spock tells Kirk:

"Do what feels right."

NO. Do not do what feels right, or you will be entrapped forever in your own desire.

Do what IS right, even if it does not feel very good.

Patience is in some ways the masters course in godly obedience, and I feel that for me it is the first day of class. "Here is the patience of the saints." Endure what you do not like and what you do not want if it is what G-d wants or what must be.

 

 

Why The Heck Should I?

 

While I am largely happy, I spend a lot of time agonizing about where the country is going. Going to hell, is where it is going, though I have to admit it has been shambling roughly in that direction for a long while. And then it hit me clear as a bell.

Last Sabbath I was reading Jeremiah, and G-d was basically saying "don't pray for these people, I am not going to listen. I am going to do to them whatever I do to them, because they are awful and I am not cutting them any slack any more." That is obviously not a direct quote, but that's the jist of it. This is the direct quote:

“‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.'

‘Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your ancestors. I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your fellow Israelites, the people of Ephraim.’

'So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you.' "

~Jeremiah 7:9-16

 

And wow, suddenly I heard that loud and clear. And this is why:

What is the purpose of this Earth? Why did G-d create it? I am sure there are many reasons, but one of them is to bring up Children for G-d. Why be vexed? The non-Children are already dead, in the long scheme of things. And in the meantime they will mess things up, but they have chosen to be ashes. They have chosen to be dust. They have chosen suicide, really. Why be disturbed unnecessarily by the actions of crazy people? Choosing suicide is crazy.

But also, our FIRST and PRIMARY responsibility is to G-d. When G-d told Aaron not to cry when He obliterated Aaron's children for offering profane incense - when I first read that I thought, "what a meanie. Here two guys are being incinerated for bad incense, and here is G-d telling their dad not to cry." But duh, G-d is right. Aaron was the High Priest of the entire people, he was responsible for representing G-d FIRST AND FOREMOST. And what was G-d's opinion of what happened? They broke the law, in the very Tabernacle itself. So what should Aaron's opinion be? These are criminals, and they died.

And then, I forget whether it was in Numbers or where, it tells of Moses going around with his face permanently covered. Why? Well there have been many explanations, but here is my opinion:

Moses was the judge of the people, and when it came to judgment, Moses wasn't home any more. It didn't and must not matter if Moses the man hated you or whether he loved you as the apple of his eye. When he had that veil on, he wasn't Moses. He was the spokesman of G-d Almighty. He had a responsibility to the Lord ALONE. Not to human feeling, not to familial love. That must have been an incredibly lonely place to be in, but it was necessary.

So what I heard last Sabbath was, don't pray for them, don't grieve for them. Leave them behind you. Don't care who wins the elections, at this point it is all far too late for that. If the people choose to be deviants, what is that to you? They are already dead. Look to YOUR obedience.

Do not pray or plead for them. I finally get that now.


POSTSCRIPT:
It strikes me relative to what I said about Aaron and his sons and Moses, that G-d has been saying that all the time, since Abraham.

What does the (interrupted) sacrifice of Isaac say to us? That your obedience must be more important than family ties, than your personal feelings, than ANYTHING. Now G-d is not gratuitously mean: he prevented the sacrifice of Isaac and a goat was substituted instead.

WHY did G-d love Abraham SO MUCH, that he moved heaven and earth to rescue his rather feckless descendants quite a long ways down the line? I mean think about that, that's like G-d curing your cancer in the 21st Century because He loved one of your ancestors back in Medieval Europe or something. Except with a WHOLE PEOPLE.

Because Abraham loved Him with his whole heart, above any other love. Even the love of the apple of his eye, Isaac.

Powerless

Stephen Brace - Wikimedia Commons

 I know that American society is going down a hole. That lies are normalized, pornography is normalized, deviancy is normalized and much more than that, lauded. That people are drugged and fed fast food and weakened and fragmented and polarized and demoralized to the point where they cannot put up any organized resistance to anything. So that the very worst in human nature can assume the throne. Because someone will sit upon the throne, and if it is not the Lord of Glory, it will be a demon.We are living in a way which will inevitably lead us down a similar road to the road the Germans traveled in the 1930's. I just pray that I won't be alive when hell truly opens its mouth wide for the United States.

Censorship is normalized. Hell, the idea that the government itself would get involved would have been unthinkable until the 21st Century: quite probably the government WAS involved before then, but we would have scarcely believed it. This is America after all, land of the First Amendment. And if it is bad in the US, it's even worse in other parts of the West. In Scotland, you can get ticketed and fined for humor. For comedy. People have already been fined for it. Canada is rapidly devolving into a totalitarian tyranny: who would have ever thought THAT, huh? Canada? The sane neighbor? Not so much anymore. Much the same conditions exist elsewhere in Europe and Oceania and the more Western parts of Asia. Apparently from what I have heard, public masturbation on subway trains is normal in Japan now. The West has gone sick.

And I know a better way than that (heck a moron of 40 years ago would have known a better way than that,) and I am powerless to do anything about it.

So I focus on my art and making sure my cat and myself are fed and happy, and that my little wild kingdom here is harmonious. Because I don't have any power over anything else.

Once upon a time, I used to ponder about whether or not I should "do something" about abortion clinics. Something involving inflammable materials. Now it is true that this would likely result in a prison sentence, and this would be very bad for me, but what would be worse is that it would in the long run ACCOMPLISH NOTHING. This people is not ready to turn their hearts, and won't be for a long time if ever. So maybe a handful of babies are saved, or not, but the actual serpent responsible would remain alive and well and living in hearts and minds in the USA. "Terrorism" (HA!) against the murder factories would feel good for a bit as a brave gesture against evil, but as long as a slight majority feels that baby murder is not only okay but their RIGHT, it wouldn't accomplish anything. You are just one little man, and the zeitgeist is against you.

So do what you can do. Be a hermit. Withdraw from an insane world. Get as far away from cities as possible. Hate evil, love G-d. Grow vegetables and look after your cat and create your art. Nobody elected you President of Crazy Town.

Theocracy is Love

Marshall Dillon may try to be an upright man, but he is functionally a servant of the sin industry.

I am not talking here about a human organization. A human theocracy, like a human democracy, like a human dictatorship, like a human everything else - is a flawed power structure that invites people to commit sins of pride.

I am talking about a real theocracy. A society where the Ten Commandments are considered to be the highest law of the land and human law subservient underneath it but still observed. I don't want priests, pastors or prophets to rule us. I want G-d to.

This land descends more and more into misery as it accommodates sin more and more. President He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named-but-begins-with-B publicly mourned the suicide death of a girl self-named Nex, a mentally ill "non-binary" girl. He did not mourn the vicious beating attack of Kaylee Gain, who is still in a coma. He did not mourn the hundreds of thousands who die of fentanyl in this country every year. His grief is very selective, and serves to promote a political agenda of deviance.

THERE WILL BE NO IMPROVEMENT until people accept the LAW OF G-D not human accommodation to sin. Sin not only destroys souls, it kills people. IF YOU LOVE ONE ANOTHER, if you love the planet itself, you will all accept G-d's law, because that will save your souls and your bodies.

I have been watching a lot of the old TV show "Gunsmoke" lately, and it's a great show, and it's also troubling. Here is Marshall Dillon, purportedly a paragon of justice and no doubt he personally seems like a great guy. He is functionally also a lackey of the sin industry.The historical Dodge City, like the one in the show, made its living off vice. Drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, lewd shows, and in the real Dodge City even more wickedness than the sanitized TV version. Dodge wouldn't exist without it. And yet Dillon in many of these episodes starts out the episode walking Boot Hill, the local cemetery, pondering on death.

Well WHY THE FRACK do you imagine there are so many dead bodies in Boot Hill, dumbass? Do you ever question the reality that, no matter how noble you may personally be, you live in service to human degradation? You ever question that, huh? A bouncer who keeps order in a whorehouse is not being virtuous. He's being a participant in the whorehouse industry.

And it's very hard NOT to be a participant in some version of the whorehouse industry these days. I am retired, but I truly feel pity for those who are not these days. While I never ran a whorehouse, I did some morally questionable work in my day. Many of those things would not even raise an eyebrow among most people, but that's irrelevant.

But as rotten as it is to promote sin for money or act in a supporting role for the sin industry like Marshal Dillon, and it is pretty rotten, what is even worse is to promote it for free. To promote it because you love it.

SIN IS DEATH. Sin will destroy your soul, but also your body. Anyone who promotes sin, in truth hates your very being and wants it dead.

The political philosopher and father of the Neocons, Leo Strauss, loved Gunsmoke, which makes me think he had no moral center. For him Dillon was the paragon of justice, albeit of a quick and dirty kind. Justice? In service to an industry of human degradation? That is no justice. Justice would be to let Dodge collapse of its own weight in sin. Dillon as a character seems like a righteous guy, but he is still a servant to a city that would dry up and blow away without the vice industry.

And well, America today makes the TV Dodge at least (the real Dodge was another matter) look pretty tame. Dodge promoted socially acceptable forms of sin at the time. There were at least boundaries. You could drink yourself to death or gamble away all the milk money for your children or catch syphilis from a ho which will slowly rot your brain and body, but if you are a man walking down Front Street in a dress, you are gonna lose some teeth. I am not saying that having limits to sin makes anything right, clearly from what I have already said drinking yourself to death or getting syphilis or gambling away your children's milk money is a very evil thing. But evil had guard rails of some kind, and now it does not. It is still evil though, either way.

I do not know how many ways I can keep saying the same thing. Get down on your knees in tears, confess all your sins to G-d, and resolve to do your very best to keep the Commandments and not sin anymore. Do not obey human kings or human ways, obey the only One who should be and has the right to be King.

True theocracy is G-d as King. And that theocracy is truly love.

Something Awful

 Something truly awful is about to happen. I can feel it. I have been right about such things before.

My initial reaction was, they are gonna *ss*ss*n*te Trump, and they may well do. You don't need to see much of the future to think that's a likely outcome.

The problem is, I am not at all convinced that that's actually it, that it is not something much much worse.

Nobody would be happier than I to be proved the fool: indeed all men are fools so I am in good company. But when it's like this, I am not usually wrong. Something bad is coming. I pray to heaven above that I am just a dumb old fool who sees things that aren't there. Please G-d let it be that.

Because the alternative, that I'm right, means something really awful is coming.

Hell's mouth opens, sucking in all that it may.