Torn Up

 

Image by Bugguyak

I have a problem, which is that many of the things I used to take solace in, I understand are worldly and often work on my weaknesses. Food for instance: I can very easily geek out on matters of cooking and world cuisines, but I understand that I also have had past issues with foodolatry.

And it is not even a matter of choosing to ignore such worldly connections in my pasttimes and practice them relatively mindlessly. I cannot ignore it. This world prickles me constantly; I am constantly reminded of its darkness, that the world both maims and enslaves. I cannot distract myself as relatively "innocently" or unknowingly in diversions as I might once have done.

The fallenness of this world and of human nature constantly tears at me. I used to think that when the Apostles spoke of the "World," they were only speaking of the world of human sin. Not really the WHOLE WORLD. Planet Earth in toto. Human sin is a big part of it and a part that is very relevant to us, but indeed the whole world including the natural world is fallen. I have always thought of wild nature as a refuge from the evils of the human world, and there is something restorative about nature, some degree of freedom from human BS, but it is the difference between unconscious evil and conscious evil. The closer I have gotten to nature in my rural refuge, the more I understand that Nature herself is exceedingly vile. It's not human viciousness, but it is viciousness. Humanity and the world it lives in, the animal world, are of a whole cloth, and that whole cloth is fallen. The whole created world and heaven are of different natures. And Nature as it turns out stabs at me in some ways just like human society would. My adopted cat Socks has had one kitten that survived out of 6 in the litter, and that one kitten looks like half its face is melted off. Something clearly attacked it, and that something is probably one of its own kind, one of the feral cats. Feral cats who also probably munched it's five late siblings. And yet this poor kitten is still surviving, with half its face looking like it has melted off. My beloved adopted cat Stripes had a litter, and apparently ALL of them are gone. This is but one of many reminders I have had of the ugliness of the natural world, to go with it's beauty. It is easy to be sentimental about nature when you don't live immersed in it. I DO live immersed in it.

Getting back to the topic of the first paragraph, it becomes hard to be enthusiastic about engaging in entertainments and diversions which I know are part and parcel of a world that injures me. Injures my heart. It's mere existence wounds me. I used to play a lot of computer games, less so now, but I went back and revisited the game Counter-Strike 2. And I had fun, but I also understood that it is a game where, if you play well, you are basically mimicking blowing people's heads off proficiently. Not happy times, if you really think about it. But how do I have any hobby, any interest, that isn't at core worldly? I am not sure I can. And I hate the world that wounds my heart.

In a related way, something that I think modern Christianity is missing that ancient Christianity had is asceticism. The practice of denying your own desires. Ancient hermits lived in the woods living off weeds and preaching to the squirrels. OSHA might have an issue with such a workplace today, I think. But what a way of life that denies desires IS, is true to the Gospel. Take up your cross, deny yourself. Beat the human hunger within you until it submits to godly authority. But even though I am myself living what many would consider the life of an ascetic hermit, my mind constantly seeks diversion. It hungers for information. It seeks out news of the world and current events which are almost inevitably dark and often makes me sad. It desires to be entertained. This is in many ways I think my last greatest temptation. Many sins and vices are in my past, but that one still lays in front of me. And yet it pleases me less and less.

I get to the point where I derive no pleasure from any of my former interests, really. It has all lost it's flavor. I stay active, but mostly doing chores. I do like to watch videos about history, but history is pretty dark too. At least it is darkness that is in the past.

Perhaps in the end I will be left with my only activity that isn't worldly, which is prayer.

Call the Lord's Holy Day "Honored"

 

Sabbath Mosaic in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem
by zeevveez

I had been kind of drifting on the topic of the Saturday Sabbath. Beyond really obvious things like don't work and don't engage in commerce, I was and am unsure how to keep it, for one. Turn off my refrigerator, like some Orthodox Jews do? Plus, a billion Christians keep the Sabbath, to the extent that they keep it at all, on Sundays.

Am I right and a billion Christians wrong?

Yes, that's exactly how it is. Or rather, to put things in their proper order, the Bible is right and a billion Christians wrong. This should not be a shocker at this point. 

There are some mysteries of one's communion with the Almighty that are not for discussing. Let me say that I was informed that I was not keeping the Sabbath in a worthy manner. Indeed, while I was wondering about the relevance of the Sabbath in the modern day, and while I was also wondering if a billion Christians are wrong about the Sabbath, I also did feel this myself. A shortcoming in the midst of some confusion does not stop being a shortcoming. There are some things I know I need to do that I have not been careful about doing. 

The Sabbath is on Saturday. It's been on Saturday for like 3000+ years. Nothing Jesus said indicated that the Sabbath has ceased to be a thing, and certainly not that it changed days. The jist of what Jesus said about the Sabbath is that it needs to be approached with a spiritually enlightened mind, not that it has disappeared. Certainly not that it has changed days.

I have also begun to understand what worlds of potential come into existence with obedience. With submission to the Lord. I feel like I see horizons I did not see before, and I have begun to taste of what it is like there. Things have started to "collate" in ways they didn't before, things arriving in life when or before I need them. It's hard to describe without being specific, which I can't be. It's between you and the Lord, you don't talk about it.

For someone who is probably regarded as a religious person if not a zealot, I actually haven't been praying that much. I had been praying the same prayer at meals, that's about it. I pray if there is trouble in my life.

Well that's pretty piss-poor, isn't it? Not suitable. As of the last couple days, prayer is on my daily schedule, like feeding the chickens. This was from today's Bible reading:

"If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath
from pursuing your affairs on my holy day

If you call the Sabbath "delight"

the Lord's holy day "honored"

and if you honor it and go not your ways

nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargains

Then you can seek the favor of the Lord

I will set you astride the heights of the Earth

and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob-

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

~Isaiah 58:13-14

And reading this, I had a sense of recognition. This is the will of God. The will of God for me (and every believer.)

I still don't know the particulars of Sabbath observance really. I mean, we all work every second of our lives in some sense, pumping blood through our veins if nothing else. But there are definitely areas where I KNOW I have done wrong and fallen short, and those areas must be corrected. 

The Sabbath is Saturday
Don't work at a job
Do not do commerce
Pray on the Sabbath
Revere His Day, keep it holy

These parts I know, and so it is sinful if I do not do these things I know to do. I probably also need to research how Jews celebrate the Sabbath, not that I feel I should be 100% guided by whatever they say, but obviously they have been doing it for a long time.

But more than anything, I am beginning to understand the incalculable consequences of obedience to God. We cannot understand what those bounties are, either in this world or the next. 

The Mother of Nightmares

 

Illustration of the Devil on Codex Gigas, early thirteenth century.

People may look at my life as a rural hermit and say, "Aren't you really a coward? You have fled from the spiritual battlefield. You're running away."

And I say, you have no comprehension of what spiritual evil is, if you don't think that running is not sometimes a valid response. 

We are speaking of the mother-father of all nightmares. The only true real-life horror story. Ontological horror that would make H. P. Lovecraft soil his britches.

I unfortunately do have some comprehension of what spiritual evil is, and I hate it and I also fear and flee from it. That is a healthy reaction, to fear evil, and also moreso to fear the Lord's displeasure and separation from the Lord if you fall into it. Since the Lord is the source of all good, all light, all truth, to be separated from Him is horror even if the demons leave you be. Which of course they won't. 

Now, sometimes you are forced to fight. You don't have a choice. And when you are forced to fight, you can't let fear dominate you. You've got to do the smack-dab in the face of that devil. To use an obscure wrestling reference, you've gotta do the Swanton Bomb on it. But if you are hanging around devil-town when you could leave, you probably should leave. 

“Come out from them
    and be separate,
says the Lord.

Touch no unclean thing,
    and I will receive you.”

~2 Corinthians 6:17

So yeah, you fight when you have to. You do a fighting retreat to get to a better place when you need to. The Israelites were called out to be a holy people, and holiness implies separation. You don't go tracking in the mud and the blood into the house of the Lord. 

It is right and proper and wholesome to fear and hate evil, and more so to fear God. This does not mean you are paralyzed with this fear: after all, the Almighty is your advocate if you are His. I cannot believe how uncomprehending and unknowing people can be that they do not understand this evil and the price of having truck with it. You are having a dalliance with the same forces that invented torture and killing people to steal their organs and abortion and somebody's daughter dead in the street with a heroin needle in their arm and... ugh, things I probably don't want to imagine and don't want to speak on further. The word "ontological" means concerning being itself, and this is ontological horror in total. All other horror traces back to this, the mother-father of all lies.

So no, I don't think I am a coward (more so than other men.) I think I see things truthfully, and that can be a horrifying thing. But however afraid I am of evil, the Devil is more afraid of God.

Submit yourselves, then, to God.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

~James 4:7