The Heart of the Law

 I found this in a text document on my computer desktop, dated to April of 2024. I thought I would share it here.

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HEART OF THE LAW

It is said that the heart of the Law is to love G-d with all your heart, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

I have always interpreted that latter one in almost Lockean terms: do not regard your own rights and needs as more privileged than those of other people. That it is not so much that you LOVE your neighbor but that you respect the humanity and rights of your neighbor. It's not that I love the vast majority of humanity; I find the vast majority of humanity to be disappointing and disgusting. But that I don't get to treat myself as more privileged, important and with greater rights than others.

And many of the critics of believers point this out, that we love humanity in the abstract and in terms of individual rights but not so much where the messy rubber of human need meets the road. Where the rubber meets the road we often say "state your business quickly and then get off my lawn, stranger."

And if I try to be honest, I think that while I respect the rights of my neighbor and reject categorically the idea of privileged egoism, that my needs and rights are more important than others; I don't think I love my neighbor. There are scarcely any emotions involved in my regard for my neighbor, and what emotions are involved are usually negative.

And then I ask myself: does my love of G-d act like that? Do I just love G-d because I love truth, honesty, justice and equity? No. I do love truth honesty justice and equity, but I also love G-d Himself. And emotion, insight and reason blend together in that as a whole cloth, without distinctions. He's not just the archetype of goodness. He's my FATHER.

So I ask myself again: do I really NOT love Man? I think I do not love the aspects of him that present themselves the most readily to me: his greed, his selfishness, his callousness, his lies, his slurs and crimes against the value of life, and his hunger for power and domination. In short I do not at all love the demonic in him, and those are the aspects that present themselves the most apparently to me.

Why then am I so passionate about abortion? Sure it's still murder, and sure murder is wrong and I should be against it for that reason, but that does not explain my passion. Fewer babies of liberal parents means fewer bad people, right? And as long as I am not the one doing the murdering, why should I be passionate about it? 99% of those babies, if they were to live, are going to turn out like their godless liberal parents.

EASY LEGAL ABORTION MEANS FEWER LIBERALS. On that basis I should keep my nose out of it and let them murder their own, right?

But I LOVE them, those babies. I don't just love their moral right to exist, I love THEM.

They haven't done a thing good or evil yet. They haven't had that chance to make those decisions and face those trials. And here I think I am getting close to the core of the matter. I DO love Man - as G-d intended him. Man as the image of G-d. And the murdered unborn never get the chance to decide where on that divide they will stand: either on the side of seeking to live out the image of G-d or the image of the other guy. They never got the opportunity.

Not to mention that abortion destroys the standard of motherhood, an important part of that image of G-d in Man. Real mothers don't love their children one day and throw them in the dumpster the next, depending on how they feel. This is what liberals say, that you are only a mother if you choose to be. You only love that child if you choose to love them. Otherwise that child is just unloved tissue and you can freely throw it away (or sell its remains to medical science.)

No no HELL NO. If it's your child, you are a mother (or father.) You are going to be held to that godly standard of motherhood or fatherhood whether you like it or not: that you love and care for your child and seek his good. Why is "Honor thy father and thy mother" a COMMANDMENT, one of the TEN? Because it is an acknowledgement that according to G-d's standards they must love you, too. Even if you annoy the crap out of them, they are obligated to look after your good. This is a critical part of that "image of G-d in Man" thing, and one that the godless are most focused on destroying.

But even a fully grown human reprobate, an incorrigible sinner: are we not obligated to love whatever shadow of the image of G-d still remains in them? And incorrigible sinners sometimes DO repent, though I grant you it is all too rare. It does happen, it happened to me.

So in short, yes I do love my neighbor and not just abstractly. I love whatever part of the image of G-d is in him, just like I love those babies. It's hard to see that sometimes, with the demonic seeming to dominate most humans these days (or at least the loudest humans,) but it's still true.

Loving And Severe

 An important step to spiritual maturity is to see G-d as He is, not as we want Him to be. If you are just engaging in wishful thinking, just seeing what you want to see, that is not real religion. G-d does not exist to fulfill our wishes. We exist to fulfill His. He wants us to come more and more into His image, which is both loving and merciful and at the same time severe and unsentimental. G-d does not spare His children; who G-d loves he prunes and admonishes. Like a wild vine, He prunes off the unproductive branches in us and strengthens the productive ones.

Yes, G-d is loving, more so than we can imagine. Whatever your sins in the past, all you need to do is sincerely repent of them and see that you were wrong and resolve not to repeat them, and your sins will be forgiven. G-d wants to move past your previous shortcomings and embrace your future improvement and reconciliation with Him. G-d is so loving that He sent His own Son to this heck of a planet to die in order to save us. We low-lifes, you and me. In fact if you are His, everything He sends into your life whether it seems good or bad to you, is actually for your improvement. Some of those things are very unpleasant at the time.

And G-d is also severe. He is severe to his own to raise them up right, and he is severe to the unrighteous. One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament is also one of the hardest. In Leviticus 10 two of the sons of Aaron offer "strange fire" before G-d's altar. This might have been unauthorized incense or it might have been because they kindled their own fire rather than using fire from the altar. Whatever was the case, G-d consumed them both with fire. And then He says a very hard thing to Aaron:

"Do not cry."

Aaron was forbidden to weep. Man! He just lost two sons at once, burned to a crisp. But Aaron was no ordinary man. He was the High Priest of the Nation of Israel. He above all had to put G-d's interests first. And the sanctity of G-d's presence had just been violated. This was a very severe thing that nevertheless had to happen.

And you may find G-d removing people from your presence, if you are G-d's. If you are G-d's, you are His temple, His holy place. Profane people do not belong trammeling the courts of G-d. For myself, I became a hermit, among other reasons, to be separate from the profane human world and I find G-d removing the World's people from my life on a repeating basis. If you are His, He will do the same to you. This will be hard, and also necessary.

The benevolence and forgiveness of Jesus in the New Testament is mentioned frequently, sometimes at the expense of the many occasions of Jesus also being severe. In the Old Testament, adultery carries the death penalty. Yet Jesus saved the life of a woman who violated this Commandment and forgave her. Just as he will forgive you if you truly repent, no matter what you have done.

He also said this:

“Go in through the narrow gate, because the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy, and there are many who travel it. But the gate to life is narrow and the way that leads to it is hard, and there are few people who find it."
~Matthew 7:13-14

This is a hard saying! He is saying the overwhelming majority of people won't be saved. Which means the odds are that most if not all of your friends and loved ones won't be either. Most of the world and most of its people are headed to the ash heap. Now, people follow a sinful way because they want to and they are free to make that choice. But it is a bit like some fish who lay millions of eggs so that only a few will survive to adulthood. Most people are like those million-minus-a-few who get gobbled up by other fish.

This is a profoundly unsentimental worldview. This is not intended to make us feel good, because it sure doesn't. It is intended to tell us the hard truth about being saved. We are supposed to feel chastened by this statement. Most will not make it. Will I? Better get serious.

This is also the same Jesus who went violent against the money-changers in the Temple. This is the same Jesus who told the Pharisees they will die in their sins. They're doomed. The same Jesus who said that anyone who leads one of his little ones (the context was children, but he means us) to sin would be better off drowning themselves.

G-d will not fit into our categories. He doesn't live to accommodate our wishes. He is more loving than we can know: indeed the nature of Heaven appears to be unity in love since the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in us; we are united in love. He is also at the same time very unsentimental in a human sense, and severe. Our job is to come to know the only true G-d, not to try to squeeze Him into our wish-fulfillment knapsack.

The Incarnation is Weird, Man

 

Madonna and Child and Two Angels by Filippo Lippi

 

 Okay, so you are an expectant mother. And you have been told that the baby you are about to bear is the Savior of the World. How the heck are you supposed to behave? And according to gospels, she knew this full well before she ever gave birth.

What you hold in your arms is the pre-existent only Son of the Living G-d.

What. The. Heck.

It might be a bit like holding a case of nitroglycerin in your arms, except it is not going to blow you up but totally change the condition of everything. I guess that after you give birth, normal Mom stuff kicks in and you are cooing and burping him and changing nappies and you kind of get amnesia as to the fact that this is the pre-existent only Son of the Only Almighty G-d. I believe I have actually experienced similar amnesia before: times when I think G-d was saying, "I don't want you to realize what is happening yet: you will have to deal with it when it is time but not before, so I am putting a veil over your eyes for now." And certainly Mary was going to have some heavy stuff to deal with 30 years hence. She was going to need to pretend that everything was normal until Jesus was grown.

G-d was saying, "This is My Son. And now, because Mary gave birth to him, this is also a son of Humanity. Jesus often referred to himself as the Son of Man. Our son. And you are going to kill him, and through him I am going to save a remnant of humanity for Myself." Very much like Abraham and Isaac, except this time the humans followed through with the sacrifice. Both the Old and New Testaments often refer to the reconciliation between G-d and Man as a kind of marriage.

You have to assume that Mary's mind was to some degree sheltered from the full realization of who was in her arms. For a bit anyway, until Jesus was an adult, she was a normal mother and he was a normal child. Even though nothing of the sort was actually the case. I think that if Jesus as a toddler went around saying "I am your Lord: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," that Mary would have eventually freaked right the hell out. But no. Lets make pretend, Momma. Let's pretend you are a normal mother and that I am a normal baby. They would have had to, almost.

Ya, the Incarnation is super weird, man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think the best of people that you can

 

From my recent colored pencil artwork entitled "Tigray."

 

I'll admit, I often think the worst of people. It's the Calvinist in me. Total depravity: we are born slaves to sin and death. Against that, there are multiple passages in the New Testament, ones that I can't lay my finger on at the moment, that say we should assume the best in people. In fact there is no reason that both of these things can't be true. We can admit that humans are born slaves of sin, but we can still choose to see the image of G-d in them when we see them, and also not assume their failure before they have committed it.

I have gotten a couple lessons in recent past weeks about not thinking the worst of people. First off was the election. I was almost certain that the morally decrepit American people that has murdered 65 million babies would elect to continue the current regime, or that the regime would find a way to win by hook or crook. Well I was wrong, Americans were better than that, and the minions of the regime appear to have been totally blindsided by the magnitude of the landslide that confronted them. We have found out that the regime has feet of clay and ideological blinders on just like everyone else, and perhaps more so in that they could not bring themselves to believe the truth in this matter (that they were losing badly) like in so many other matters. The American people were better than I thought they were. 

Now, the 65 million babies are still dead, but the US has a population of 335 million so really there are still a whole lot of people who have never been implicated in that sin. Not to mention that many of the abortion prone have had multiple abortions, so again the average American is not as bad a person as I assumed.

Which, being pleasantly surprised is always nice, but with it comes the realization that you were maligning people falsely in your heart, which is not nice.

In another situation in my personal life, I felt that certain people had failed to fulfill their part of a bargain. We had a deal, the other person didn't fulfill their part. It was really a minor matter, but that doesn't mean I was not feeling testy about it. Well in the end, belatedly, they more than fulfilled their obligations. In fact I would up being very pleased with the way they had held up their end of the bargain, albeit two weeks later than they should have. And this person had had significant personal emergencies that explained why they were late. So really, I was being the bad guy to think ill of them when they had good reasons.

Which is another reason why not to think the worst of people: so that it doesn't wind up that you're really being the heel, not them. ;) Even if in six out of ten cases the person you think is being slackward really is, what about the 4 others? You have wronged them in your heart, even if you never say a cross word to them. Don't do that.

And that is a reason for avoiding the cross words part. Again, so that it doesn't wind up that you are in fact the heel. I had mild and indirect cross words for this person, but I still had them, and my goodness they were sick and couldn't help being late.

All of which leads up to the New Testament message that it is better to be transgressed against that to transgress. If you are transgressed against, that is no blemish on your soul. You are innocent. If you transgress, it IS a blemish on your soul. I really need to take in this message much more seriously than I have been in the past. I can be a pretty testy guy sometimes; I can be quick to condemn, quick to put up the verbal dukes, but condemnation is not at all my rightful business in life. Christians should aim to eschew it. That doesn't at all mean that we don't call sin, sin, in the manner of the derelict progressive churches who hold up a Bible with one hand and preach abortion and homosexuality with the other. We can absolutely condemn ideas and practices, but we should stay out of the business of condemning PERSONS. It's not our business in life to do that.

Think the best of people if you can. If you are wrong, you have not sinned. If you are right, you have prevented yourself from sinning.

 

 

 

 

 

Better for Everyone

 

 

 We won. Those we hate, who hate us, have been utterly repudiated and for now, defeated. I did not think it was possible, and no doubt it was only possible due to a providential sequence of events.

·Biden choosing to run for a second term
·The coverup of his senile dementia
·The abrupt revelation of his senile dementia via the debate, proving the "conspiracy theory" at least in his case that the people we think are in charge, aren't.
·The fact that it was by then impossible to re-do the Democratic Primaries, leading to one of the most unpopular Vice Presidents in recent memory essentially being anointed from on high to succeed Biden as the Democratic nominee.
· J. D. Vance accepting the role of Trump's Vice President
·The failed assassination attempt at Butler, PA
·Elon Musk joining Trump, which was of incalculable value.
·The second assassination attempt
· Harris hiding from honest interviews, which is strange since she was widely considered even by neutral parties to have won the debate so one has to presume she could have held her own if she had tried?
·Harris failing to distance herself at all from Biden's record in one of the interviews she did agree to with a friendly media outlet.
·And many more.

If anyone honestly thinks this sequence of events is mere happenstance, you need to check your credulity.

But though we call them enemies, we do not battle against the flesh of the progressives, but against the demonic spirit within them. We want a future that will be better for THEM, TOO, and for their children. Whether they see it as such or not.

Now Trump is far from a perfect man and certainly could make mistakes, but this time around he has a whole posse of helpers who can keep him on a straighter path than last time. Last time he appointed a slew of Establishment figures to his cabinet: he is unlikely to make the same mistake again.

The progressives will hue and cry for a long time. Given their resistance to honest reflection and self-criticism, it may be a long time indeed. In time though we could make a better America. If this revolution becomes at least semi-permanent as versus just another reversal of the tides of American politics, the descendants of the current crop of weak complainers may become strong men and women. Better Americans. The tide of ever increasing odds of warfare could recede. It could be what Reagan hoped for, a new morning for America.

Or it may not, but at least the enemy of the time has been thoroughly trounced and repudiated, and shown as the disreputable and untrustworthy would-be elites and Woke scolds that they are. How we build on that win, is up to us. May G-d help us to that end.

 

 

 

 

TRANSCENDENCE

 

Detail from "Foundation" by Robert Dodd

 

 

"...they will be like the angels in heaven."
~Mark 12:25

 

 The condition of humanity will be transcended. I do not say that it can possibly be transcended, or that it might be transcended. It WILL be.

As if it has already happened.

Jesus said that those who see the next Age will be like angels. And we throw that word around, angel, like we understand what it is like. We do not understand. It is beyond our comprehension. Yet we can touch on that condition in this world too.

The futurists think we will transcend our humanity by merging with silicon, with machines. That is not transcendence. That is death. A machine, however clever seeming it may be, even if it seems greatly superior in capabilities, is ontologically inferior. It is a step into nonbeing, not into greater being.

Mankind is not in charge of its own transcendence, if that transcendence is into Life. It never will be. It can only take charge of its own descent, into death. On the one hand is Life. On the other, is Death. And many there are who choose death, and few who choose Life.

Can we start to see some of the parameters of that transcendence? Of course we can, the Lord means for us to prepare for that Life now. The life of the ones chosen to participate in that Age are given gifts from G-d: not normal human gifts, not gifts which can be calculated or learned by rote or by Man's skill, but only from above.

Insight:
To know what you cannot mechanistically know or know by mere reason. To see by a sense that is not a sense. It is the whisper of the Spirit of G-d in your ear. You know without hearing or seeing it, without reasoning to it, because you trust the guidance of G-d.

Creativity:
G-d created all of this, created a natural world with so much complexity, sophistication and beauty in it that Man's efforts at creation are like children playing with sticks and mud. You think supercomputers or space shuttles are complicated? Try the flower on the humblest weed in your yard. Try a gnat that is almost too small to see, but can navigate itself and fly and find food and reproduce. And yet somehow people believe it happened by accident.

And yet we were intended to create too. The Bible says that G-d delegated the creation of the world to His Son. And we will also create, things which we cannot now imagine, because we will be part of His family and it is His nature to bring things into existence.

Courage:
We might think that courage only pertains to existence in this world, and it is very much relevant to life in this world. Well think on this: Jesus was already in heaven. He had to come here and become weak and small and be tormented and die, in order to save the world. I am not sure we can comprehend that scale of courage.

And those who have a future in the next Age will demonstrate courage too. Not recklessness, not bravado, not underestimating the costs, but courage born of faith. One who will participate in that next Age knows that he is completely in the hand of G-d, and whatever happens is not intended for his harm but ultimately for his good.

Courage might be the most needful quality to have any hope of improvement in this world or in our lives. It is easy enough to lose heart without faith, and sometimes with it a bit. What keeps you from losing heart is to know that you have a purpose, that all of this has a purpose; that He's there, and that He cares. The Lord says that He is an impassioned G-d. That is, He cares.

Fortitude, or endurance:
To endure what might seem unbearable, and to come out better on the other side of it than you were before. Life circumstances that might destroy others, you survive.

****

We have to understand that despite all the war and suffering and sin and cruelty and greed and inhumanity in this world and in Mankind, G-d has a PLAN for humans. And nothing in this world or out of it is going to defy G-d's will. Not because Man is so great, but because G-d is, those who are chosen to participate in that age will be like angels in heaven.

And what is that like, that state that we cannot now comprehend? I comprehend this:

Immeasurably innocent, and immeasurably wise.


"Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves."
~Matthew 10:16

 

 

Witness It With Me

 

Daniele Crespi's Pieta

 

The world is about to change forever.

Can you feel it?

No I am not talking just about the election, impending travesty though that is. No, the world we knew is going away forever and it's never coming back. Potential presidential puppet Harris says we should look forward not back. Well we should wish we could turn back a page or 10 pages, but we're not gonna. No, this despicable "revolution," if you can call something led by the most powerful a revolution, is triumphant even if she loses, which we should earnestly pray she does. But regardless, the world we've known is over. The world is changing, and not for the better.

When G-d told Noah that He was going to destroy the world with water, He didn't say go out amongst the evil in their evil cities and preach to them. He said "build an Ark." All of those Woke evil doers believe in what they believe in just as strongly as I believe in what I believe in, because that IS their religion. We live in a post-evangelism world. We live in a "build an Ark" world now.

Sometimes G-d tells people to do things that need doing. Sometimes though you can't do anything. Sometimes G-d just says, "be my witness." Witness it with Me. After all, G-d has to see every terrible thing in the whole world. If we are G-d's family, how can we say we should be protected from seeing it, too?

Sometimes that is our cross in life, to see. I think it is mine, or one of mine anyway.

A boy gets swept off a roof in a hurricane begging Jesus to save him, and he drowns. A lot of people would say, "why didn't G-d save that pious boy?"

They don't ask, "why didn't Jesus step down off the cross?" However precious that boy was, and he was, Jesus was more so. He was G-d's Son. Why didn't he step down off the cross? Because suffering and dying is what we do here. Even him. I'll die, you'll die, Jesus died, that boy died. And all these are or will be real deaths. But that doesn't have to be the end of the story.

I was watching a movie, just some dumb movie, and I had the strong feeling that G-d was sitting there watching it with me. And we have to see what He has to see. Every death, every disease, and worse, all the evil in all the hearts in the whole world. The evil that could murder a baby. The evil that could start a war. The evil that people could lead other people intentionally into sin: the sin of gender confusion, the sins of sexual deviance (and there are many kinds, adultery and divorce too,) We like to quote Jesus saying that if you cause one of these little ones to stumble, it's better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be tossed in the sea. But before the millstone-tossing comes the straight fact of it: people lead other people astray intentionally into paths of sin and death. First we have to see it. And see all the rest of it.

Witness it with Him. Witness it like Mary had to witness her child getting horribly murdered. Witness it like G-d had to witness His only Son the same. He didn't call Jesus down off the cross. He left him there. Jesus died like all men die, except worse than most.

We are entering a time when we will have to see many terrible things, and you will feel like you are all alone and nobody else sees the madness and they will think you mad for seeing it. But if you are with G-d, you are not alone. You may be led up to a cross and crucified on it, but you are witnessed. G-d sees it. If you are G-d's, G-d is with you even if you too hang on a cross. As all Christians must.

I was watching "Silent Service," an old TV series about the US submarine corps in WW2. And of course it was all portrayed very heroically, and it was heroic I suppose. To the extent war ever is. No doubting the Axis was evil. And of course it was the Forties when men were men, and nobody wanted to show themselves afraid, and nobody wanted to let down the team.

But as I was looking at those depictions of men at the helm or loading torpedoes or even baking biscuits, and I thought to myself, "they must have been terrified." For sure I would have been. Everyone knew what the Japanese thought of prisoners. Prisoners were playthings for their sadistic will, sometimes they just tied bricks to their feet and tossed them over, or beheaded them, or tortured them, or if you were lucky they would just starve and work you to death. You see them there, doing their jobs, going through all the motions of happy warriors, and you know in their heart of hearts they are saying, "what fresh new hell comes next?" Will we start diving uncontrollably and get crushed, will we get blown up with a depth charge, will a shell smash into the hull and smash us to bits, or will we have to surface and surrender and throw ourselves on the not-at-all tender mercies of the Japanese?

And at least they had some variation in their modes of death or torment. Some Japanese housewife and mother in Tokyo was no doubt brewing tea with her baby in tow when incendiaries from American B-29's burned the whole fucking city to ashes and killed 100,000 people. She would have had no input in it whatever. It was just her time and her baby's time to burn alive. She just happened to live in Tokyo. I am not saying it was wrong to do it. If it had been my decision to make, I would likely have done the same. I am saying that it happened, and you can't diminish the horror of it. Before you file it away in some nice safe little corner of your brain where you can safely disregard it, you have to see it. Just like He has to see it.

That's what I am, a witness. The time of prophets is over, prophets presume that there is anyone around tender-hearted enough to hear what they are saying. This is the time of witnesses.

 

 

 

God Has Already Won

 

 

 Humans intrinsically have a problem thinking about things that happen after their life in this world is ended. St. Paul said we have eyes for the invisible:

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal."

~2 Corinthians 4:18

but we are still flesh and blood and often fix our minds, rather insistently, on flesh and blood and matter and the visible. I think St. Paul was being aspirational here: that's what we believers SHOULD be focused on, not what we usually actually ARE. Given all the problems in the Corinthian church, I bet the flock there was not unlike us in that respect.

Here in the US, we have a person with a considerable chance of becoming President of the United States who is essentially a communist who believes in abortion on demand with few or no restrictions. She believes in rampant government theft of our possessions. She is a warmonger, just like the neocons who now often support her. She is almost guaranteed to wreak havoc on the economy, and will if she is able to also do the same to society in general. That's assuming that the world's various hotspots don't erupt into a broader and more dangerous conflagration.

It's not that we were in great shape before. And only against such a candidate would her competition look like a white knight charging to the rescue, when as compared to the great Presidents of the past like Eisenhower he looks like a midget. I have lost count of the number of people who don't at all like Donald Trump who will nevertheless vote for him since the alternative is... that truly unpleasant and sin-celebrating woman.

After the debate, I was fuming. And then suddenly I got relief in my heart. Yes, a godless people in a democracy might well vote for a godless awful President. Why would that be a surprise? But I'm going to be fine, and in the bigger view it is all already over. Evil and the devil have already lost. G-d has already won. It's over.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!
I have overcome the world.”

~John 16:33

HAVE. Present tense. It IS overcome, it just doesn't know it yet. This world's mortgage has been foreclosed, the eviction letter is sitting in the mailbox, but the tenants go on imagining that they run the place.

As Paul said, the solution is to fix our eyes on the eternal and invisible, not the temporary and visible. Now, I think that if that evil woman becomes the leader (or puppet) of this country, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. The world is going one direction, to it's destruction; but we believers are not going that direction. We are pilgrims in an alien land, our home and destination is in another place.

G-d has already won.

 

 

 

Memento Mori

 

Detail of Danse Macabre fresco in the Holy Trinity Church, Hrastovlje, Slovenia

 During the Black Death in Europe, some people held lavish feasts, being certain that a horrible death was impending. Isn't that like life for many people, really? It's like life for all of us to some degree. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Indeed for many (with their bucket lists,) the knowledge of death seems to bring with it an imperative to experience more stuff and obtain more stuff and get more pleasures before Death calls up your number. But once it does, what then?

Something that was common in the Middle Ages that we really could use more of today was, they made use of frequent reminders that life was fleeting and the aims and ambitions of this world are abject folly. Are you going to have a feast in a charnel house? That's what the world is. Will you revel in a place of death? Should you even be capable of having the heart to do such a thing? Are you going to drink hearty as the Grim Reaper puts his hand on your shoulder? Or "slide into your grave with a margarita in hand saying 'what a ride!'" as that saying goes?

If after you died, you had to explain yourself after having lived a life seeking pleasure and "experiences," how would you even do that? I would say, you couldn't possibly do so. If you were to see someone laughing, drinking, and dancing naked in the immediate aftermath of a bloody battle with the cries of the wounded and disemboweled all around them, and the bullets still whizzing past their ears, you would say they were heartless and senseless at best and insane at worst. And yet, do we not all do that? That scene is this world.

Even our food, and I have a notable weakness for food - we eat corpses to live. Tasty corpses, but still corpses. Even vegans: vegans have a notable blind spot for the fact that innumerable invertebrates must be killed in order to grow their food, and the process of growing it destroys habitat for wild plants and animals who won't even have the opportunity to live. We eat death, we live in death, we make babies in death. To revel in pleasure and experiences in the house of death is also death: in that case potentially our spiritual death.

Memento Mori: "Remember that you have to die." And after death, the Judgment.

The philosophy of this current culture is the philosophy of the bucket list. Yes it dreams of forestalling death by the magic of medicine, some even hope that humans might one day be digitized (what a nightmare,) but otherwise in the face of their certain death the strategy is, "party down boys, it will be last call soon." What madness!

It seems like something from a strange alien planet now, but at one time, devout Christians wore cilices under their garments, or wore purposely rough garments, to chastise their flesh a little. They sought to chasten their bodies to expand their spirits. They sought the discipline of discomfort to remind themselves that meaning is not sought through pleasure and that comfort can be and often is the enemy of meaning and enlightenment. We are not talking about severe suffering, just persistent discomfort. Nothing demonstrates sincerity towards G-d like depriving your body for the sake of your soul. Jesus said, "he who would save his life will lose it." And it is life we seek, but not this life built on death and surrounded by death. A completely new life. One of Jesus' most frequent messages is that he had come to give eternal life to his sheep that were given to him by his Father.

"Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the
Scriptures or the power of God?
When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor
be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."

~Mark 12:24-25

This transitory life must be lived in the light and knowledge of the infinity of the END. To party down in the charnel house is the definition of madness. Everyone knows they die: what they may not know is that they will have to justify the time and life they were given. What did you do with it? How can you justify the suffering of the mother that bore you and all the innocent creatures that met their graves in your gullet? Did you even TRY to rebel against the devil and eternal death?

Or did you dance the Devil's tune, gyrating to the Danse Macabre?

 

 

 

 

 

Feet Washing

 

Photo by Michel Bakni

 There are rituals in Christianity, and some denominations are prone to have way more of them than others. Probably to excess. The one and only ritual that Jesus himself both instituted and intended his disciples to practice on an ongoing basis is the bread and wine. Now is this ritual about rituals or church buildings or priests or the value of repeated invocations or anything like that? Absolutely not. Jesus had no interest in making all the correct outward observances, clearly. He wasn't even careful about keeping the Sabbath, and that's in the Ten Commandments! You could take Mass every day and still be damned, and you could never take it and be saved, though if you never take it perhaps something isn't quite right, but the fact remains. Outward observance counts for, if not absolutely nothing, very little.

What is communion or Mass or the bread and wine actually all about? The Gospel of John, John 6:1-60 and John 15:1-17, explains it all very clearly for those who have ears to hear.

What is most personal to us if not our own bodies and minds? If you don't own your own body and mind, you don't own anything. As the baby-murderers love to say, "my body my choice," which are essentially sacramental words to them and a perfect inversion of the communion of bread and wine.

Is it a matter of "my body my choice?" Not if you hope to escape the doom of this world, it isn't!

Jesus is saying that if you want him to take you to himself, you must take him inside yourself. It is NOT your body and mind anymore. It is a temple of G-d. That can be a very intimidating thought, but that's how it is. As our former President loves to say, "Deal With It." ;) You don't own yourself anymore, G-d owns you. Your body and mind are the temple of G-d. If it is not, you are not redeemed. And of course there are those who think themselves perfectly content to be destroyed as long as they own themselves in the meantime. Well first, they don't really own themselves. Evil owns them. Secondly, to say that this is a path without a future is an understatement of epic proportions. Yet many are content to take that deal.

If this is the meaning of the sacrament of the bread and wine, understanding the meaning being way way more important than the ritual, what about the foot washing?

The foot washing in John 13 appears entirely in order to make a point, or a couple of them actually. There is no indication that this was intended to be an ongoing institution, or if it were to be an ongoing institution, no indication that the institution itself was at all important. For Jews in the Holy Land in the First Century, foot-washing was a regular if not daily occurrence. It isn't for us (we have much better footwear and most Americans anyway bathe daily.) When someone came home and was going to be in the house for awhile or for the night, they would wash their feet. If they were wealthy, a servant washed them for them, or their wife, or someone in the household of lower status. If sandals are the default footwear, your feet are at a minimum going to get dusty, and maybe gross depending on what you stepped in. Regardless, someone of higher status would not normally wash the feet of someone of lower status.

So Jesus washing the disciples feet was doubly uncomfortable. First of all, he was the Son of G-d washing your feet. You want to forbid it. Secondly, it is a humiliating thing, it hurts your pride. Here is this holy man acting like he is a wife or a slave to you or something. We don't get how offensive this was to them, because we are not status-conscious nor do we regularly wash the feet apart from normal bathing. It was very very offensive.

The first part of the meaning of the foot washing is summed up in the phrase, "Love One Another." If he, your lord and savior, washed your feet, then you should wash each other's feet. There is no place for status or pride. And it is so typically Simon Peter that he is the one who objected. To which Jesus replied, "If I don't wash your feet, you have no part with me."

To which Peter in his typical desire to always be #1, said "then wash my hands and my head too!" ;) In other words, these other plebs, you can wash their feet, but I want the full treatment. ;)

However, this "if I do not wash your feet, you have no part with me" part of it is the sneaky but very important bit.

If you are too proud to let G-d deal with your most spiritually messy business, or any other messy business of yours, you are too proud to be saved. Remember, it's not really your life anymore. You have taken Jesus into yourself and Jesus has taken you into himself. You are dead, and raised with Christ, and your body now is the temple of the only Almighty G-d. If you claim the right to keep Christ out of your business, you have no part with him.

He is going to be cleaning our feet in a spiritual sense all the time, and that's humiliating. I'll tell you what it isn't though. It isn't death. It isn't destruction. It isn't being the tares, or the dead grape branches, thrown into the fire. You have to be humble enough to let G-d take out the trash, and that is freaking humiliating, but you have to do it. You want to say, "you are Almighty G-d, you can't take out the trash, I'll do it." But you can't do it, not really. G-d has to, and G-d has to teach you like you were a baby, because if G-d isn't teaching you and taking out your unsightly garbage, you're not His. Your body is not then His temple and your mind is not His, and Christ's. Pride has no place.

As Isaiah 54:13 states:

"All your children will be taught by the Lord,
    and great will be their peace."

And as Habakkuk 2:14 states:

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

And this is a present reality as well as a promise. G-d will teach you, if you give yourself to Him. Christ's sacrifice to redeem those who G-d will choose out of the world unites you in life and death to him, and him to you. And he is united to G-d, and the Father to him.

So I would say the foot washing is really second only in importance to Jesus' words in John 6 and 15, to which the sacrament of bread and wine is connected. Not that we need to go around washing each other's feet all the time, again that is the outward action. It is that when you have taken Jesus' flesh and blood (his sacrifice to save those who are his in the world,) this is how you need to take his washing your feet (the thousands of little cleansings and purifications that are needed for you to stay in Christ, and the humility before G-d you need to be cleansed.)

If he is not washing your feet, you have no part with him.

 

 

 

 

 

The Mystery of Psalm 82

 

Part of the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Dead Sea Scrolls

 

 Psalm 82 is one of the shortest Psalms, but oh what a can of worms it opens up! It is dense with possibility. The text (JPS translation) is as follows:

"God stands in the divine assembly;
among the divine beings He pronounces judgment.
How long will you judge perversely,
showing favor to the wicked?
Judge the wretched and the orphan,
vindicate the lowly and the poor,
rescue the wretched and the needy;
save them from the hand of the wicked.

They neither know nor understand,
they go about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth totter.
I had taken you for divine beings,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
but you will die as men do,
fall like any prince.

Arise, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are Your possession."

~Psalm 82

The JPS is literally translated direct from the ancient Hebrew. Now, this has been interpreted that G-d here is talking to the assembly of Israel, NOT to an actual assembly of "gods." That is a very hard position to assert, since the first two lines make it clear where G-d is speaking and who he is speaking to. Also, men from Adam on have always died. And clearly they are not "any prince."

According to Middle-Eastern mythology, different gods govern the fates of different nations. However the rest of the Bible tends to come down on the side of saying that the pagan gods do not actually exist at all. Who then is being referred to as the "divine" governors of these nations?

I think it is fairly clear that we are being given a snapshot into the fall of the fallen angels. Now there is not very much of the Tanakh, the Old Testament, that deals with demons at all. But let us back up a moment.

The third line refers to these rulers judging perversely, showing favor to the wicked. G-d says they should instead be saving the needy from the depredations of the wicked. At this point the psalm sounds a lot like the writer of Luke, with his concern for the poor. But are the poor only the economically poor? Are not others poor in their hearts and minds?

 The next lines make clear that it is not only economic poverty that is being spoken of. The people, in other words the people in these nations that these "divine beings" are supposed to be responsible for, neither know nor understand. They stumble around in ignorance and are led astray. The foundations of the Earth stagger around like a drunk. Yes these "divine beings" show favor to the wicked. But more than that, they make the world a playground for those wicked ones, because the people live in darkness. Spiritual ignorance. They do not have the spiritual food that they need.

It seems to me likely that it is saying that different angels were appointed to be the guardians of different peoples and nations, but these angels fell into judgment. These angels might not have been exactly the same as the pagan gods worshiped by those people (hence Molag Bal for instance might fully be a human invention) but they were nevertheless responsible, like "gods" over those nations. So the pagan gods could still be absolutely null and void, but this Psalm is speaking of the actual angelic governors of those nations rather than them.

What is of special interest to me is that these angels-turned-demons are here being turned mortal: in other words they will be destroyed in the Last Judgment just like sinful people will. Now their lifespans may be aeons longer than ours, but a death sentence now still hangs over them the same as it does over unregenerate Man. Eventually they will be destroyed. It is my interpretation that neither the wicked nor even the demons will frolic around in the flames and brimstone for all eternity; they will be destroyed. Gone, bye-bye, no more.

Hell and immortal souls are Greek conceptions not Hebrew ones. The fact that they crept into the New Testament is understandable considering that the Gospel spread first and most widely among the Greeks. But that doesn't make them true. G-d Alone is Life, and He gives that Life to those humans He has chosen through his Son Jesus Christ. Those apart from G-d will live out the terms of their mortal life that have been given to them, and then die and be destroyed, apparently demons as well as men. I have often thought that the idea of an eternal Hell for people is an insult to the final and total victory of G-d, but evidently not even demons will live in Hell after the Judgment. They'll be destroyed, just like men.

The words "fall like any prince" prefigure Jesus' words, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Fall where? To the Earth. The demons now live, albeit invisibly, on the same planet we do. And their government of the nations of the Earth is proceeding apace.

Now Jesus quotes this Psalm, "you are gods," in the Gospel of John. Which would tend to reinforce the very nonliteral interpretation that the Psalm is actually speaking of the leaders of the Israelites, like the scribes and pharisees that Jesus was speaking to. This despite the fact that neither the Israelites nor anyone else has ever been immortal on the Earth. However he may have been speaking as it were over their heads to their bosses. If one assumes that demons were giving the pharisees their words and that the human beings were actually loyally serving demons, he is actually talking past the pharisees to their bosses. That is one interpretation anyway. It is said of Judas "the devil entered him," so we know that according to the New Testament, devils can essentially run human beings and speak through them.

Alternately, according to the "divine beings are Israel's leaders" idea, you could say that the life they are losing is their eternal life. Not that they were not going to die in the flesh but they were going to be eternally destroyed in the Last Judgment. The fact that the Psalm actually states that G-d is standing among divine beings, which hopefully no leader of Israel would have ever called themselves, mitigates against this theory but the Psalm is so short we are left with as many questions as answers.

 

 

Not Going That Way

 

Image by Colleen Caulson

 It is easy to get distracted by the direction the World is going and not focus enough on where you are going. The World celebrates sin and death and will be doing that much, much more. But I'm not going that way.

People have been being evil from time beyond reckoning. 2000 years ago Jesus said "people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." Nothing has changed, nothing will change, but the way it manifests changes.

Tyrants in olden days could be really evil in very large demonstrative ways. Nero lighting his garden party with burning Christians, for example. But as an instrument of Satanic dominion over Planet Earth, they were very limited. They acted to please their own evil desires, but beyond that, they didn't do all that much for their evil Mack Daddy in the red tux and tails. Of course, most people following their evil natures anyway, so yeah, I would assume the Evil One wasn't that displeased. But it all could be so much, much more. It could be optimized.

What's different now? World spanning cultural media that celebrates sin. A functionally united soft-totalitarian Woke Regime spanning the Western World that also serves the same purposes and spreads that ideology of sin, sometimes by force. A Woke secular education system that gets kids started out the wrong way. A populace demoralized and destroyed by consumerism and decadence and a society that treats them like a commodity. 150,000 drug deaths in America in 2023, and 50,000 suicides, the most suicides on record. These people died of spiritual disease, because they lost heart and lost the reason to live. Too much of the Devil's world killed them.

Satan's government of the Earth is just way more effective now, and will continue to be more and more effective. We ain't seen nuthin yet. People imagine they can reverse it, but they can't. No doubt the election of Kamala Harris will be an epic disaster, one I consider fairly likely, but Trump getting elected would only be a speed bump in the way of the onward march of Satan's kingdom. Assuming it is that.

But I don't want to dwell on that too much now. Yes, our ancestors only 50 years ago would be absolutely appalled that most of the Western world has government censorship, and that the US Government has been doing its very best to join the party. There are more things to be grim about than I have time to tell about. But that's not what this post is actually about.

I'm not going that way, and you don't have to either. I am not going to cooperate or participate in it. The Lord is merciful, quick to forgive sincere repentance. If we constantly have our eyes on the World...

...and to be sure it is a freaking train wreck...

 ...then we will not be having our eyes on the blessings and peace we can receive from the Lord. I know, it's hard not to look at that 45 car high speed pileup on the highway with dozens dead and injured. Actually a 45 car high speed pileup is a triviality compared to what is actually going on, but that's just an example of a rubbernecking opportunity. And it is tempting to rubberneck, and I do it all the time (world news, not actual wrecks,) but it is unproductive and unbecoming to do it. It is easy to feel oppressed once you realize how things actually are.

Ya the world is going to hell, and the world and hell have the same boss. But I don't want to go that way. That's not my boss. Grace and peace can be yours. Spend some time going that way, not rubbernecking at all the people going the other way. I am telling this to myself as much as anybody, to be clear.

Grace and peace be yours in the Lord. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.

 

 

 

Resolution

 

 

 I will not believe that anything that is plainly in the Torah is untrue. And the Torah is super super clear front and center about whether anyone other than G-d is also G-d. "You shall have no other gods besides Me." Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, the holiest prayer in Judaism makes that abundantly clear: "Hear O Israel: The Lord alone is God." YHWH alone is G-d. No Trinity. No co-gods. YHWH only.

I also find it hard to believe that Jesus was just a dude with an opinion. Too much rings true. And yet on several points Jesus appears to contradict Mosaic morality. The Torah says, "eye for eye." Jesus says, "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies." The Torah says "sweep out the evil from among you." In other words, using force, kill those who do evil. Jesus says not to resist an evil person.

“You have heard that it was said,
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.
But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn
to him the other also. And if anyone would
sue you and take your tunic,
let him have your cloak as well.
And if anyone forces you to go one mile,
go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs
from you, and do not refuse the one who would
borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said,
‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you." ~ Matthew 5:38-44

Aside from the begging and borrowing part, that would appear to be 100% a contradiction of Mosaic morality. Thieves should be arrested, those who abuse the courts should be punished. People who commit assault should be punished. Sweep out the evil from among you, by force.

How is it even remotely possible that these two things can be reconciled? On the surface they absolutely can't. The clear commandments of G-d in the Torah don't just go away. Until the end of this planet, they remain in force. And they do. Christians who believe that the Law no longer applies to them are just plain wrong. Jesus himself said in Matthew that no part of it will pass away until the end of this world. Good is still good. Evil is still evil. Always will be, until evil and death themselves are buried.

I found the resolution in John 3:17:

"For God did not send his Son
into the world to condemn the world,
but to save the world through him."

It goes on to say that the world has already been judged and found guilty! The WORLD HAS BEEN CONDEMNED. You don't interrupt someone headed to the gallows to inform them that they have been found guilty of another crime. They are already heading to the gallows, and their punishment is sure. They are already headed to destruction, as the majority of people are. Jesus' parable of the wide and narrow roads says basically the same thing. The world stands condemned because, as John 3:19 states, the people loved evil. They loved darkness. Humanity as a whole made their decision and off they go to the ash heap. March, march, march. Right now, the only thing that matters is not condemning the already condemned, but saving anyone who can be saved. As such, the last thing you want to do to a soul that might be saved is tempt them to use physical power, even against evil people. Because who is the evil? EVERYBODY. They are all going to get theirs inevitably, unless they can be saved by G-d.

There were two wars for the Earth: one was a physical war and humans were the soldiers. Hence, "sweep out the evil from among you (by force.)" John says that Satan is the ruler of this world which he is, but the Torah says nothing about it. That is because in the beginning, the first war was still being fought. Satan had not won the physical earthly material war yet, his ownership of this planet was still being contested. Well, the Hebrews failed, lost their way, and that first war was lost. When G-d gave dominion over the Earth to Man, he is not a false giver. He gave it, he's not going back on it. Man in turn gave the world to Satan. So by Jesus' time, the war for the Earth had already been lost and the Earth and Satan stand condemned. There is no such thing as two death sentences, you already have the one.

But G-d was not going to leave it there either. Yes humanity as a whole has made its decision. But some individuals can still be redeemed and that, and not judgment, is the whole mission of Jesus on Earth. Judgment would be redundant. As Psalm 49 states, humanity willingly marches sheeplike to Sheol (destruction) with Death as their shepherd.

Now to understand the next part, we have to refer back to Abraham. Abraham so loved G-d and was so obedient to Him that he was willing to sacrifice what he loved most on the Earth. His own son. We have to imagine that this tore the living crap out of him, but he was ready to do it. G-d had an angel stop him.

What was G-d's answer to the otherwise irrevocable verdict on Planet Earth? Well, G-d has a Son. The Son is not G-d, Jesus makes plain that he can only do what he sees his Father doing and he takes his orders from G-d. He is not himself G-d, but he is united to G-d and he is the pre-existent Son. This is where all the Trinity nonsense gets confused. We here on earth have an inviolable wall of flesh between ourselves and every other human person, we can not truly be inside them nor can they be inside us. In fact we never truly know them, neither as they know themselves nor certainly as G-d knows them. The old saying that we all die alone is true, no one can normally share your death nor can anyone ever truly live inside you or you in them.

Well those rules do not apply in heaven. G-d is IN Jesus and Jesus is IN Him, just as Jesus is in believers and believers are in him. This does not make Jesus and G-d identical, they are still their own persons, and only G-d is G-d as even Jesus says.So Jesus could say that if you have seen him, you have seen the Father because the Father is in his heart and he is in the Father. But still the commandment against idolatry is not violated: only G-d is G-d. Jesus is the Son. Were he not the Son, he could not do what comes next.

Like Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son for G-d, G-d sacrifices his Son for the world, or that part of it that He has selected out of it. Realize that from birth, Satan owns you. You are his slave. But apparently he cannot prevent that slave from being bought back out of slavery under the right conditions. Satan may temporarily be in charge here on Earth, but G-d is still G-d. In the words of the Godfather, He made Satan a deal he could not refuse. I will let you take my Son as a sacrifice, AFTER he goes forth on Earth to deliver his message. In return, everyone chosen by G-d to be redeemed by the Son and who believes that message gets their freedom. Actually Satan probably thought this was a pretty sweet deal. Most people are going to stay with him anyway on the freeway to perdition, and he gets to torture the very Son of G-d. The holy Son of G-d gets delivered into his hands to execute in the worst way possible, by way of the lovely compassionate Roman Frikkin Empire. There is no way Satan could resist.

We, and I do too, sometimes think of G-d as someone who cannot hurt. He does not know suffering like we do. And okay, He is Almighty G-d, it's different... but what this was to Him I cannot imagine. For a human, losing a child is the worst pain imaginable, and this was no human child. This was the holy Son. But He loved us too, loves us, and this was the only way. This opened the door to us becoming Children of G-d too, through His Son. And as he died for us, we die for him too. We go through the crucifixion of burning off the dark nature we inherited, suffering in this world, dying to this worldly life, sometimes in some cases literally dying for him as many have through history.

In summary, while because of the caveat about idolatry many Christians might not consider me a Christian (and I could say much about how Christianity has become twisted over the centuries,) I consider myself a follower of Jesus now. My conflict about the apparent incompatibility of Mosaic and Jesus morality, and with my knowing the absoluteness of the first commandment (you will have no other gods besides Me,) and my conflict with the Jesusolatry that Christianity has become guilty of... all that has been resolved now. His flesh is really food and his blood is really drink.

 

 

Obligatory Down Time

Don't think about the bathroom, think about this pretty flower.

Apologies for the biological references, that's how real life is.

I used to think of my "potty" time as time completely wasted. Here I am, sitting on the pot, while the day passes. Tic, tock, tic.

But now I spend at least half that time meditating on the humility of the human condition. This is not prompted by any particular intestinal issues, I am mostly okay in that department, but more by the fact that I have intestines at all. And that is definitely not time wasted.

I asked G-d, "Lord why did you make us so lowly?" But then I realized that most humans do not in fact embrace what is to me our objective reality. In fact they think damn well of themselves, or of humanity in general, or both. Lots of people think they are the hot stuff, forgetting the One who gave them all they have. They are the big man on campus, the big cheese. They are the shit.

I think of Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu, who I am sure went to his firing squad in utter astonishment. "You can't do this to me, I'm the boss! I'm the king!" I wonder if Biden is feeling somewhat of the same thing. You can't do this to me, I am in charge. I'm the Man!

In fact they and we are all like a child in a school play who put on a crown to play King Lear or someone, and refused to take it off after. All human glory is fleeting, and all kings play the fool sooner or later. Whether we are the king of a country or the kings of our little worlds or our own personal screenplay in life, we all get shown up in the end.

From dust we came; to dust we shall return.

So anyway, that's how I have come to value my obligatory down time.

They Don't Want What You're Sellin, Boy

 

 
My creative output has been decreasing a lot lately, and it just hit me: why are you bothering? Why put yourself out? If you WANT to do that work, do it, but don't imagine that hardly anyone will see it. Most won't understand it, and the ones who do understand it will likely hate it. For that matter, why write blog posts like this one? That's a little different: I feel a compulsion to write sometimes. I am actually more a writer than an artist, though I am both.

I am profoundly out of step with this era, and I THANK G-D and everything holy that I am. I see all the time the consequences of being IN step with it. People are literally endangering themselves and sometimes dying to be in step with "the world" and conventional "wisdom," and if they are not endangering their health (which often happens,) they are endangering their souls.

Sometimes I can see for miles and miles, but it does no one any good but me. And I am grateful that it DOES do good to me, but I understand that to most people, to the extent they think of me at all, I am a hermit crank. They don't want to buy my apples. Even if I give them away for free, because they aren't really mine.

And I know that I live beyond the pale, far from the cities and plots of men, and whatever calamity befalls them is unlikely to touch me. I can see their plots coming miles away. This is my sanctuary, and I am practically invisible here. Held in the hand of G-d.

So why try to talk to a world I hate and which hates everything I love?
What's the point?

Is there a people more deaf and hard of heart than this one? It's hard to imagine if so. If someone does want to turn to G-d, why talk to me? Read the Bible! You don't need it second hand. People getting things second hand is a big problem because they keep getting it wrong. What do you do? Obey the Commandments, love G-d, do not transgress against your fellow man. Do not defile the image of G-d in you with lewd conduct.

A fact of life has been knocking on my door for awhile now and I haven't wanted to let it in. Well it's time I did let it in:

They don't want what you are selling, boy. They never did.

And they have a human right to try to try to get what they do want, even if what they want destroys them. Which, if they are seeking worldly things and their own ego and willfulness and the values of this era, it absolutely will.

 

 

 

Nihilism In Practice

 

Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

 You can shout "Hail Satan" all day long, and it would look nothing but ridiculous. You can try to put a statue of Baphomet in the lawn of the official buildings of your State, and really it says nothing. It just offends people, is all, and there are worse things than being offended. Much worse things than that. In fact, most of us could benefit from being a little more offended in the RIGHT ways, though statues of devils would not be that way.

No, Nihilism in practice, Satanism in practice, is what has an impact. And there are many forms of putting it into practice, but one of the most effective, and I imagine most pleasing to the Evil One, is perversion. Sexual immorality.

You see, the secular materialists say we are nothing but monkeys with a genital fixation. And sexual immorality says "yes, I am a monkey with a genital fixation. That is all I am."

Of course the next step is to for them to say you are not even a monkey. Monkeys after all have rights of a sort. You are just robotic meat in motion, just tissue, a mote dancing in the sunbeam of material determinism. Just a bit of protoplasm that can be rearranged however the State and Science wants to, since rights and souls are an artifact of a bygone superstition. We will rearrange you to suit ourselves (ourselves being the new secular god of sciencism and the State.) You are nothing.

And from a certain point of view, you ARE nothing of yourself. You are only something if G-d says you are. And the "something" you were intended to be, is made in the image of G-d. To be Children of God. Not because you are so great. Because He is.

Sexual immorality is throwing feces on the image of G-d. That's why I would imagine the Evil One would like it so much. It is Satan yelling at G-d saying, "look at what I can do to Your image! Look at these innocent babies, I am going to get their own parents to murder them! Look at this human made in your image, I will drag him into the dirt and slime and make him deny everything of You. I will make him lower than a beast. He will grovel in degradation and like it! He will glory in his own rot!"

Well I am a human. I sin, I am not perfect, but I am not a monkey or an automaton either. I was made in the image of G-d and I am going to do all I can to bring that image to fruition in me. Not because I am so great, but because I am loved and I am going to respond to that love by becoming more and more like the One who loves me. His love makes me live, and gives that life meaning.

Sexual immorality is far more eloquent than any rhetoric could ever be. It is someone nailing themselves to the inverted cross of degradation, disease and decay and smiling and inviting you to join them there. They aren't just saying stuff. They are sacrificing their very soul to convey the message.

 

 

 

 

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.