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.