Father

For the first time today, while I was praying, the name Father seemed too small. You are more than any father could be to me. You are everything to me.

***

Usually when I do these blog posts, I have a theme or something specific on my mind. This one might be a bit more rambling.

My mind seems to be coalescing on an image of the folly of human nature. I am using the word folly as sort of a shorthand for common but diseased frames of reference. Religious people tend to talk about X or Y sin, but sins devolve from a worldview, an attitude of soul. If your spirit was not deviated, corrupted, your behavior would not be.

Folly is that worldview, and everything, from adultery to greed to murder to lying is merely the fruit that falls from that tree. I have gotten to the point where I can almost smell the folly, and it makes me physically nauseous. Yet am I always that different? Perhaps I am only allergic to forms of folly that I have personally overcome, not by a long shot the whole thing. What does transcending that folly really mean? Can humans on this earth ever really transcend folly?

I read a story about a woman who compromised her morals for cash. In the end she quit that job, but I feel like she didn't really change. The worldview that made her take that shady job hasn't ended, only that particular job has. If someone really plops down a large enough wad of cash, would we all be whores? Would I be a whore? Does everyone have a price?

I think I know the answer for most people: if someone drops a huge wad of cash in front of you for a job that is morally unpleasant but with limited personal ramifications (you won't wind up with a 20 year jail sentence,) then it is simply a matter of how much money is involved. Not whether.

But money is not the only possible currency of folly, and it may be that I am more vulnerable to other lures. I do truly believe that even if someone offered me $10,000 a day to work an easy job at an abortion clinic, I would not do it. I know I would never be able to live with myself after. What benefit is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul?

But I might be more easily led to compromise if the payoff is other things. Particularly if the compromise to my principles involved is small. In fact I know that if the deviation from the better way is small enough, I will compromise. Perhaps I am not a whore to evil, but under certain circumstances I am willing to give it a lap dance. Or at least a wink.

What does a life on this Earth without folly even look like? Is it possible? If it is possible or even asymptotically approachable, I want it.

I don't want it to save my soul, I know that the Lord is forgiving. I also know that all fall short. I want it because it is good, because the Lord is the opposite of this folly.

I crave the goodness of the Lord my G-d like a heroin addict craves the junk. I see folly everywhere and it makes me want to puke, but I am not completely immune. What does completely immune look like?

I think from the point of view of someone who only understands folly, it is humanly inconceivable. "You turned down that money? That was a great job offer. You're not spiritual, you're stupid." In fact I know it is inconceivable, because it operates on the basis of what is invisible. You look at a person, and you think they are operating in the same world you are, but they're not. They are operating in the Kingdom of G-d and you are operating in the human world. The world of folly. From the viewpoint of a worldly human, the one freed from folly might look like a borderline bum, a person of no importance. Low status. Because status operates in the human world of folly, and people functioning on the basis of folly want it. They might seem simple-minded.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

~Isaiah 53:2-3

But the truth is that I am not that person yet. I keep dipping my toe into the filth, even while hating it and hating myself for doing it. Media is my downfall, I look at the news pretty much every day even though I understand that it is trash. I watch Youtube and movies. I am deathly adverse to boredom. I crave intellectual stimulation, even if what I am consuming is trash. I engage in political debates even though I know it is futile, that politics are futile. Politics is like spectator sports except with slightly more intellectual furniture than NFL football. I have no more ability to affect political outcomes than I do to change the outcome of an NFL playoff. It is folly. But I still do it.

But I do see that it is folly. And seeing it, perhaps I will do better.