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.