Worldviews Thrown Out

In my last post I described something of “the pathology of worldviews”:

“Not content to seize upon values and follow them where they might lead (or follow them until we might realize they must be discarded), we contrive to place values on scales of moral theory and to imagine that our moral theories can extend to the bounds of our existences.”

Worldviews are bad things, and all too often they give us permission to do bad things.  Worldviews purport to bring order to our lives, and yet it is often in that which is disorderly and confusing that the truest lessons are to be learned.  I will present a couple of examples from the Gospels.  Luke and Matthew each have Jesus describing a great feast, meant to be a parable for the kingdom of heaven.  In Luke (14:15-24}, we are presented with “a great supper,” to which a “certain man . . . bade many”:

“And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.  And they all with one consent began to make excuse . . . . Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes . . . . Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.  For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.”

It might be unnecessary to say that the element of compulsion related in the passage above would seem to fit nicely with the “unmerited election” (or some such) that characterizes in part the worldview of the “faith alone” camp, although Jesus explodes that in the very next section:

“And there were great multitudes with him”—this is not some cryptic or esoteric teaching—“and he turned, and said unto them”:

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.  And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”

There could not, of course, be a plainer instance of “works” being described as necessary for salvation (nor indeed a more harrowing description of the kind of “works” required), unless it might be said that such self-sacrifice is only “truly” made by the elect, and arises not from the elect themselves but by divine bidding.  Yes, one might say that—but only within a realm of discourse in which warrantless assertions could be made with boundless license.  One might as well venture that Adam ate what Eve offered simply because he did not want to seem to slight his divine host’s choice of guests.

Or, in a more sober vein, there is Jesus’ conclusion to the “great supper” lesson, saying, “whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”  There would be a prudent sobriety also, in asking just how this is all supposed to contribute to a “worldview.”  Are not Jesus’ statements intended continually to shake the believer to the very core?  Is not the believer asked continually to discover what he or she values, resolving meanwhile to pursue untrodden and un-envisioned paths in pursuit of those values?  Who would not cast aside each and every permutation of burgeoning worldview, as being potentially a trap or a hindrance along the continually-discovered path?

Yet we assign worth to worldviews because we want to have worldviews—they are comfortable and comforting.  They also become threadbare, and the wearer becomes ridiculous.  A perfect example of this is the miniaturized and portable universe inhabited often by street-level evangelism.  An appalling amount of energy is expended by sincere “witnesses” intent on convincing “the world” (or rather, the “unsaved” of the world) of sinfulness.  In a world, supposedly, of continual affirmation of the individual’s self-esteem (or whatever is thought by evangelicals to be the current manifestation of the devil’s age-old lies), the witness resolutely tells “the world” that it is fallen and sinful.

However, apart from a slender cohort of Hollywood eccentrics, New Age philosophers, and liberal educators (routinely ridiculed in Christian circles for the ease with which their veneer of “non-judgmentalism” can be scratched), it would be difficult indeed to find persons who did not subscribe in substance to man’s “sin nature,” now or ever.  The Judaism of Jesus’ day, the remnants of the Herodian power structure, the Roman Empire, the pagan religions rife with purifications and sacrifices—all were chin-deep in the notion that people can transgress (and with awesome variety and persistence.)

Jesus admonished his followers not to lord it over each other in such oppressive manner as did the leaders of the Gentiles over their subjects.  There was no lack of notions of lawlessness and sinfulness—and punishments—among the nations.  The Jews needed look no farther than the stories of Daniel in the palaces of Babylon.  Yet no amount of old or new evidences of sin-recognition in the population at large will disturb the evangelical worldview that hovers over the notion that the cause of Christ is served by doling out a simple diagnosis of humanity’s ills—sinfulness—addressed by some simple prescription of salvation.

As though salvation from sin was ever meant to be simple.  A person’s struggle with sin can be as convoluted as the devil can devise (now at last we have him in his element), and a person’s resolve—attended by as much unmerited, untestable, and unquantifiable grace as a person might hope for—to resist sin and persist to the end must go wherever the end might lead.  This, then, would seem to be the lesson of Matthew’s version (22:1-14) of a great feast:

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.”

Matthew’s version descends even to murder and vengeance (though scarcely more exacting than Jesus’ demands—"whosoever doth not bear his cross”—in Luke) and leads to the king’s decree:

“Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.  So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.”

But the narrative is not yet finished: “And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?  And he was speechless.  Then the king said to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  For many are called, but few are chosen.”

It is not so much the clash between “faith” and “works” that concerns us here (though “works” seems to get the better of it).  What is of importance is the careening, unsettling nature of the parable.  I don’t know exactly what is meant by the man without a wedding garment, and neither does anyone else.  The matters described therein are not supposed to be easy or simple, and the last thing any of us needs in connection to such matters is this or that “worldview.”  Jesus tells us what to value (and what not to value) and we are challenged continually to consider whether his demands for self-sacrifice do not amount to the most prudent and humane means by which we might confront each moment.  As I wrote in the last post:

“We are told by our Savior to put our hands to the tasks around us, and to not worry about tomorrow.  Our worldviews, on the other hand, tell us that each and every task makes sense only in an all-encompassing context, and all are parts of some great plan to which we imagine ourselves privy.”

The Lopsided World

One of the main downsides of worldviews is the inevitable human tendency to include unwarranted elements of symmetry.  If we think we can comprehend an overarching view of our existence (we can’t), then we in our feeble understanding are drawn continually to force elements of balance, equivalence, or conceptual juxtaposition into that view.  This is part of the pathology of worldviews.  Not content to seize upon values and follow them where they might lead (or follow them until we might realize they must be discarded), we contrive to place values on scales of moral theory and to imagine that our moral theories can extend to the bounds of our existences.  Our existences, then—rather than being continually unfolding experiences of our values placed by us in the hands of God—become stories told by us, stories of good and evil, heroes and villains, noble causes and dark agents.  Such are worldviews.

We are told by our Savior to put our hands to the tasks around us, and to not worry about tomorrow.  Our worldviews, on the other hand, tell us that each and every task makes sense only in an all-encompassing context, and all are parts of some great plan to which we imagine ourselves privy.

Entranced as we are by worldviews, we are forever missing opportunities to learn lessons understandable best in modes of surprise and disruption.  We are continually looking at things from above, rather than from within—and when we look at things from above, we attach a geometry to our comprehension.  This or that force—in our musings—is played off against another, and we observe the virtual symmetry (or near-symmetry, as we observe imagined conflicts between opposing forces.)

A notable example of this is the persistent tendency to view the Temptations as some sort of battle between the devil and God over Jesus.  Certainly, there are situational causes to see the Temptations as such a battle, but the proper response of the observer is not to identify with the winning side, but rather to emulate the behavior of Jesus.  The desert, the stones, the temple, even all the kingdoms of the earth, even the devil—all are mere ephemera.

The most insidious element here of the tendency to concoct symmetry lies alongside the need to emulate Jesus.  There are two ways to emulate Jesus here; one is correct, and the other is not, and that makes all the difference.  The incorrect way to emulate Jesus here is to imagine oneself responding in like manner to the devil.  A careful look at the Temptations reveals that the particulars of Jesus responding to the devil’s taunts are no more important than the particulars of the setting.

Attempting to make ourselves attentive to the values held by Jesus, a few interesting (and non-threatening) points can leap out.  The devil says, “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”  By “non-threatening,” as I just mentioned, I mean that we can look at Jesus’ reply without being made uncomfortable by making the inescapable observation: Jesus responds with, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Jesus, it must be observed, does not respond in direct manner to the devil’s challenge.  To Jesus’ reply of “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” the devil might merely counter with, “Alright, tell one of the stones to turn into an engraving of the Law and the Prophets.  What does that have to do with whether you are succumbing or not to hunger?  You have not denied the necessity of bread.”

The point, as we must assess forthrightly, of Jesus referring to the importance of the word of God lies not in the substance of Jesus responding to the devil.  The devil is hardly worth Jesus noticing.  What is important is the fact that Jesus has drawn into the matter that which he most rightly values: the word of God.  The value settles the matter.  Jesus focuses on what he values, and that is response enough to the scheming of the devil.

The Temptations, then (in the sequence presented by Matthew) proceed to the “pinnacle of the temple," and the devil dares Jesus to throw himself down.  Jesus responds with “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  Again, the threat of a charge of impiety would overshadow our assessment, if the passage was really about some great battle between the devil and God over Jesus.  Our assessment would have to be some such as, “How is Jesus really responding to the devil?  It seems like some mid-twentieth-century American story of a cowardly bully boy being finally challenged, and responding weakly with, ‘It’s a good thing I’ve got my church clothes on, or I’d really teach you a lesson.’”

How, indeed, is Jesus really responding to the devil?  If this is indeed some great, potentially cataclysmic confrontation, with the fate of the universe in the balance and the sovereignty of God ostensibly in question, what then would it be to the devil to be answered with, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”?  In the story of the Temptations, the devil is a nobody, and all that matters is that the sinless Son of God responds correctly, and that he models as well our correct response to the challenges of our own lives: to remember what we value—the scenarios of our contrivances be damned, the vistas of our worldviews be damned.

And finally the devil “sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,” and says to Jesus, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”  Jesus’ response is “it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  The devil is answered, of course, but the answer has nothing to do with the devil being reckoned of any standing as an adversary.  “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” is logically inconsistent with any interaction between Jesus and the devil—unless the quotation is understood as Jesus addressing what he values, this being the most fitting internalization—as it would be also for us—as he shows the devil the door.

Indeed, it is too rarely noted that Jesus shows the devil the door.  To take the notion of a “cataclysmic confrontation” to heart, it would have to be reckoned that—before, during, and after the Temptations—the door belonged to the devil.  The confrontation takes place in the world.  Regarding “all the kingdoms of the world,” the devil says, “All these things will I give thee”—as though they were the devil’s property.  The corresponding quote from the devil in Luke is, “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.”

And what does the devil, the ostensible ruler of the world, get for his trouble?  In Luke, Jesus says, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  In Matthew, “Get thee hence, Satan.”  These dismissals seem scarcely to be consistent with Jesus reckoning that the world is the possession of the devil, much less a devil who could hold out the world as a temptation for another being, and be told to keep it.

In what is presented to us in the Gospels, the devil is presented as a nobody.  The Gospels focus on the values that Jesus holds, and that he wants us to find and nurture within ourselves.  All of these centuries' worth of talk about “the world,” and about worldviews, and about the world under the devil, and about our place in the world—all of this is as nothing in the face of our Savior’s admonition for us to look to this day’s troubles, and to the troubles of our neighbors.  If we value what Jesus values, the lopsided and wobbling world will carry on as Jesus would will.

Working Out Worldviews

An apt example presents itself about the workings-out of “worldviews.”  On Patheos (August 17, 2022) Peter Demos uses the concept of worldviews in “Is Progressive Christianity Counterfeit Gospel?”

Almost from the outset, Demos’ piece features convenient maneuverings, such as, “Some people say that Progressive Christianity is the expression of how Christians should adapt or conform to our culture regarding popular social issues.”  Much more problematic than the vague “some people” is the incredibly tone-deaf use of the word "conform."  One has to wonder how often "progressives” in that batch of “some people” ever use the word “conform,” in any context.

It is no real surprise that Demos’ references to a proper worldview are accompanied by insistence that any opposing worldview share at least a similar architecture, if not content.  That, unfortunately, is how worldviews work.  Granting oneself a god’s-eye view of existence is scarcely conducive to consideration of whether one’s opponents are correct in refraining from taking such a posture.  In the present case this betrays itself in Demos’ conjured pronouncement about what constitutes a “flaw” in Progressive Christianity: “In my efforts to better understand this movement, I’ve discovered a major flaw — I can’t find a clear definition of it. Without a doctrinal statement, it’s difficult to understand how one can choose to be a Progressive Christian.”

Of course, a believer who is going to demand a “doctrinal statement” can be expected to demand also a hard-edged notion of authoritative Scripture, and Demos does not disappoint, offering up a marvelous tautology: “If the Bible is true, we either accept the entire Bible, or we accept none of it.”  (His choice of Scripture quotations in the piece, unfortunately, deprives us of explicit knowledge of what he thinks of the Deutero-Canon.)

Witnessing, as we must, the rolling progression of presumptions that characterizes Demos’ embrace of a worldview (as in anyone’s embrace of a worldview) leads us to see how he must conflate the incomparable, searing message of the Gospels with the creaking, overburdened, fought-over-through-bloody-centuries hulk called “Christianity.”  (Although the term “Christianity” is perennially used by this or that denomination as though their form of it was obvious to any possessor of sweet reason.)

Or as Demos puts it, “The hubris to think that Christianity needs to progress or adjust is a classic example of the dangers of pride. To say that we know more than God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit should raise a red flag to those who are following any revised form of Christianity.”  Demos states that he is not sure what the doctrinally-hazy Progressive Christians are addressing individually (“This begs the question, what exactly is Progressive Christianity improving?”) and so his contention that “Christianity” does not need to “progress or adjust” places him in the position of equating the entirety of a belief system with the deity in which it believes.  I would suggest that Demos needs to look to his own “hubris” (as well as to the question of who is actually “begging the question,” as it is properly understood.)

What is really troubling about Demos’ embrace of a worldview is his confession (certainly his to possess and to believe) of his spiritual progress: “It wasn’t until I was 42 years old that I truly embraced Jesus in a personal way and was saved.”  Of course, we can only analyze such a statement on how the words themselves seem to resonate with us personally, but for myself I could not utter such a statement without connecting it to the question of values—that I had come to recognize what mattered, and what did not.  All of the necessary elements of a worldview, then, would follow as a matter of course.  To define, embrace, and vocalize a worldview stemming from the conversion process would be to inject only potentials for error and for distraction.  Are worldviews really necessary?  As Demos himself says, “No path leads to true happiness and everlasting life except for Jesus alone (John 14:6) . . . .”  (He follows that with more Scripture, blunting the point if you ask me.)

A worldview, for us, isn’t a real thing.  A worldview is a god’s-eye view.  In their darker applications, worldviews are used to justify all sorts of great horrors, all the greater when done in the name of the Savior who asks us to ask ourselves if his eyes do not look at us through the eyes of the suffering.  That is as close to a god’s-eye view that we ought ever to come.

To have a worldview is to have to justify that worldview, and to pretend otherwise must lead inevitably to double-speak.  In following up his conversion story, Demos writes, “Prior to that, I misused the Bible to justify my worldview, instead of using the Bible to guide my worldview.”  Neither Demos’ conversion nor his life as touched by Jesus is our business, but it is manifest nonsense to speak of anything as “guiding” a worldview—unless that “guide” be the worldview itself, with everything else flowing from there.

The Bible, as Demos describes it, must of necessity be a worldview—the lens through which all else is analyzed (or held to be so.)  Or—to reject a “worldview”—the teachings of Jesus, to the extent to which we can grasp them, can constitute our guide, and the incomprehensible world (and all its problems) and the unprovable Bible (and all its problems) can be seen by us in Jesus’ light, as Jesus would will.  I recommend the latter option.

The Worthlessness of Worldviews

I ended my last post with:

“We can present God with what we value—and we can conceptualize the hope that we lay up for ourselves things of value—because to possess a value ascribed to something is possible without contending about its ultimate value to God.  To possess a worldview, in contrast, is to tell God what he values.”

I think of this especially in light of having read recently one of those innumerable insipid essays attempting to justify the Calvinist fixation on “unconditional election.”  It might almost go without saying that the essay I am recalling hauls out a reference to Adam and Eve trying to be God.  I must always try to show that the justification—even the positive mention—of “unconditional election” is a horror—and the horror is not either in the applicability or inapplicability of “unconditional election” in itself.  God, for all we know, operates on the basis or “unconditional election.”  Or the way that God acts might blow away any conceptualization that we might ever grasp.  That, however, does not stop the commentators from grasping—and all that they ever succeed in grasping is a handful of impiety.  

All that the Calvinist commentators succeed in grasping is a portion of that impiety that, in effect, tries to be God.  Adam and Eve—the prototypical novices—are novices by comparison.  It is no honor to God to fiercely defend our conceptions of him, or of his modes of action.  Paul (yes, of course, the above-mentioned essay cites Romans, as they will) is the prototype in this regard.  It is a horror to read Paul and his musings about the potter and the clay.  (Such musings cannot pass without Paul hedging his bets: “What if God . . . ?”)

So, Paul says “the potter” can make two types of vessel, meaning the elect and the damned.  Can we, in our turn, imagine the same thing out of the mouth of Jesus, the mouth that uttered Matthew 7:11?  “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”

Paul, for his part, cannot in Romans even hold to that simplistic teaching that is called the “Pauline” doctrine of unconditional election.  In Romans 2:5-11 Paul refers to “the righteous judgment of God,”

“Who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: For there is no respect of persons with God.”

What more blatant example of “respect of persons” could there be, than the unpredictable and incomprehensible “unconditional election”?  Paul is speaking in Romans as an apologist; Jesus, of course, always spoke as a teacher—a teacher who spoke with authority.  To think of Paul as the peer of Jesus in the laying down of Scripture is a horror, yet that unwarranted deference to Paul is the price of trying to make a comprehensive worldview out of the tantalizing, maddening value-field with which Jesus confronts us.

As I started with above, “to possess a value ascribed to something is possible without contending about its ultimate value to God.  To possess a worldview, in contrast, is to tell God what he values.”

The Value of Worldviews

The notion of “roused, readied, reaped,” like any other notion, can be valid only insofar as it serves as a guide, not a worldview.  Worldviews are the property of gods.  It also must be kept in mind that the very phenomenon of notions becoming worldviews held by people is constantly attended by another human phenomenon: the tendency to settle on what are effectively (though non-explicitly) worldviews.  This all has its origin in the idea of “meaning.”  We search for “meaning,” and we will argue sometimes about whether the notion of “meaning” is a good thing.  Ultimately, such arguments will dissolve over the definition of “meaning”—whether “meaning” is logical or visceral—and we can end up fussing over whether meaning can be found in (for example) adopting orphaned animals or not.

But when “meaning” is examined in terms of worldviews the argument can become more pointed—though any process of examination seems to presume that worldviews in question will be explicitly stated.  Of course, therein lies a great potential for self-delusion.  To hold a “Christian” worldview, for example, effectively necessitates the conceptualization and description of a “non-Christian” worldview, and no one need be told how problematic it is to verbalize the position of one’s opponent.

When worldviews are described (as often seems to be the point) in terms of morality, the phenomena mentioned above become even more problematic.  To hold and espouse a worldview that contains ostensibly a moral code is invariably to describe a collection of thoughts and behaviors that the worldview-practitioner has to rally himself or herself to enact.  To do the opposite of fulfilling this or that moral worldview is generally taken to be simply immoral—and to think or act immorally is considered indistinguishable from behaving simply out of impulse or instinct.  The upshot, then, of much of the discussion about moral worldviews is to consider holders of this-or-that worldview as against holders of none—were it conceivable that such a person (at least a competent adult person) might exist.

Then (retreating of necessity from that last inconceivable notion) the holder of this or that worldview is seen as against people who hold (more or less) on to (more or less) different worldviews—people who might be more or less concerned about having a worldview in the first place.  I trust I have described my contention about the complicated nature of worldviews, though I am compelled to add an additional contention about worldviews: that self-same desire to describe responsibly the problems of conceptualizing or holding to any worldview ought (if that desire be focused concertedly) to lead to consideration whether the value of a worldview might not consist ultimately in its dissolution.

I am drawn here to consideration of Jesus’ despairing cry on the cross.  Innumerable “explanations” have been given by commentators.  The simplest explanation has been given the shortest shrift.  Perhaps Jesus was supposed to feel that way.  Perhaps we are all—ultimately—supposed to feel that way.  It might well be contended that all finite beings are to be understood—virtually by definition—as deprived of the ability to understand their existence.  Much more so are we to be understood as deprived of the ability to possess a defensible worldview.

If worldviews are to understood—as I contend—to be the province of gods (that is, of course, properly the province of the true deity, though surrounded in our conceptions by innumerable counterfeits), then possession of a worldview ought always to be discarded in favor of an outlook that tends toward the dissolution of worldviews.  The “immoral” or “ungodly” among us perform impressively in constructing schemes of meaning—or in emitting more-or-less convincing protests about there being no ultimate meaning.  The countering temptation might be to stand all the more determinedly on some contention about there being a defensible and meaningful worldview consistent with proper teachings about the deity.

This last temptation is described in all its baser aspects—indeed being a “temptation” as properly understood—in the teachings of Jesus.  We do not understand this world, and we do not understand the next.  Our worldview—as Jesus will account it—resides in what we value, and our life’s purpose consists in discovering and curating what we value.  The adoption of some explicit worldview actively opposes our proper appreciation of value, as surely as some statement of faith about Creation opposes true responsibility on the part of a scientist.

This, then, is where I imagine “roused, readied, reaped” to lead.  We are born into a flow of time and space, and we are shaped by our experiences within the realm of the environment that consists of us and all we are affected by.  So much for “roused” and “readied.”  To be “reaped” would be—since no one can describe it in the present tense—to be cast into the larger realm which in its expanses is the province only of God.  Presuming to drag some construct of “meaning” into this final consummation would be nothing but a deficit on our part.  We can present God with what we value—and we can conceptualize the hope that we lay up for ourselves things of value—because to possess a value ascribed to something is possible without contending about its ultimate value to God.  To possess a worldview, in contrast, is to tell God what he values.

The Lesser Part of Any Possibility

Toward the end of my last post I wrote:

“The gospels describe the ministry of Jesus.  They do not describe its content, insofar as Jesus considered some such things to be pivotal and eternal.  The gospels are guides to our search—our search for the path, and for the gate.”

Our search is attended by the need for enlightenment, as I wrote:

“If we treasure the right things, we will be associated with light rather than with darkness.

“The matter, however—if we act as though we might analyze it—is not so simple.  When dealing with the question of how we humans see what we need to see (or do not) or hear what we need to hear (or do not), the gospels all make some sort of reference to Isaiah 6:9-10:

“‘And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.  Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.’”

Moreover, the gospel view of God includes the notion (presaged at points in the Old Testament) that God responds on occasion to willful, grave disobedience by giving transgressors visions both terrifying and misleading.  God punishes the complacent, the willfully ignorant, and the cowardly with imposed tendencies to indolence, dullness, and fear.  Admittedly, a certain detached analysis can posit that this means that God propagates lies, but this is no insight to any truly relevant matter—one might just as well contend that the very existence of deceit in any form in God’s Creation means effectively that God lies.

What is pertinent to our discussion here is something I described in the previous post: “The gospels all stress the importance of people being enlightened, but it would be disingenuous to maintain that the gospels speak of plain truths taught plainly.”  However, to say that the gospels do not “speak of plain truths taught plainly” is also, again, to raise objections as fundamental as asking why God created an imperfect Creation to begin with.  The conundrum shows itself all the way back in the beginning.  God threatened Adam with death if he ate of the forbidden tree.  Adam did not die.  Of course, if Adam had died, he would have found himself in the afterlife (according to the prevailing biblical view) and Adam would have been in a perfect position to ask, “So just what is this ‘death’ thing anyway?”

Manifestly, the great questions of existence can be spoken about more or less truthfully, but great (and therefore fundamental and—more importantly—“framing”) matters exist on a plane in which their very existence confounds notions of truth and falsehood, at least as far as we can understand them.  We experience existence through sensory processes that are imperfect—does that mean that the divine that created us meant for our every moment to be shot through with lies?  We might answer in the affirmative, but what (or where) does that get us?  Would we really be saying anything?

The question, which we might ask continually of ourselves (“Would we—or are we—really saying anything?”) is a very good question.  I would cite the admonition of Jesus that we are to pluck out our eyes or chop off our hands if they cause us to sin.  We can discuss the saying, but does the element of “discussion” really apply?  Clearly Jesus is confronting us with the gravity of sin, but are we supposed to glean a “lesson” from the admonition?  I contend that we are supposed to get a wrenching from the admonition, and that the harrowing imagery of Jesus’ saying is supposed to be of value in itself.

A similar sort of confrontation from Jesus greets us in Luke’s story of The Rich Man and Lazarus.  The architecture of the rich man’s torments in the story has—incredibly—been analyzed by theologians as descriptive of the realm of torment, even though the very notion of Lazarus—and Lazarus alone—in the “bosom of Abraham” would only bizarrely be understood to be taken literally—to say nothing of the contention that such is how Abraham, a human like Lazarus, would be spending his eternity.

The story of the tormented rich man is supposed to be harrowing, and it is a study in human pathology that the story would be taken as anything other than a consciousness-shattering alarm.  Of particular head-spinning impact is the story’s logic of simple surfeit and want presented as sufficient groundwork of the two men’s respective fates.  One would think that both the notions of wealth among the saved, and of salvation grounded in faith alone, would be reckoned exploded forever by the parable—but such is not consistent with how human beings function.

We lie to ourselves, and we do horrible things.  Such is the content of our foundational set of experiences, once we are old enough—sadly, amazingly young—to realize such things about ourselves, and about each other.  We talk about law, and government, and financial transactions—even about interpersonal relationships—and it would not occur to us for a moment to bar from any such discussion the prudence of expecting horrible things from people.  Much of child-rearing involves inculcating into the young a necessary caution about people.  And yet we can look at a passage of scripture that screams at us how we need to gut ourselves of our inherent evil, and the last thing we will demonstrate in the course of our analysis is any real attention to the business of gutting ourselves of inherent evil.  “Pity the damned rich man,” the twisted analysis will say, “who failed—perhaps was predestined to fail—to understand that he could simultaneously surrender his life to Christ and surrender himself to a life of luxury garnished by whims of optional alms-giving.”

We lie to ourselves, and we do horrible things.  Moreover, we deserve to have God treat us as creatures who lie to ourselves, and who do horrible things.  Yet again, we are fully aware that we deserve to have God treat us as creatures who lie to ourselves, and who do horrible things.

And yet what do we do with Jesus’ most emphatic warnings to us?  Consider the notion of the End Times.  Jesus makes the appearance of the Awful Horror the pivotal event.  At this appearance we are to drop everything.  And Jesus says, in a direct manner that the theologians have not been able to explain away, that the generation who heard him speak would witness all these things.  What are we to make of Jesus’ warnings?

Jesus speaks often enough of the complacency of the rich.  He describes a rich man who looks forward to years of idle contentment, and who is then told most abruptly that he is a fool, and that his soul (his distinctly ill-directed soul, at that) will be required of him that very night.  Would any disinterested observer conclude other than that the rich man was experiencing his share of something common to all mankind, always: the experience of the End?

Just as we are hit by Jesus’ command to chop off our hands (as if we would really do that) so we are hit by Jesus’ command to abandon all (as if we would really do that) at the appearance of the Awful Horror.  The End is always now, and we know it.  Our lives might be required of us now, and we know it.

Jesus is not lying to us when he describes an End Time scenario that would involve a wrapping-up of all earthly business.  We, however, are lying to ourselves when we pretend that anything we know about ourselves and our proclivities would militate truly in any other fashion that to place ourselves always in the dock of judgment.  We do not deserve to have God tell us the truth, and the only sincere way we can address this fact is for us to accord ourselves always the lesser part of any possibility the gospels describe.

A Salvation Outline

Toward the end of my last post I wrote: “To value something is to treasure it, and what we treasure we store within ourselves.  It always remains, and even when forgotten it can be brought again to view in the harrowing moments of our value crises.”

When, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus begins teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, he starts on an extended passage in which he repeatedly stresses the notion of storing up treasures in heaven.  He stresses as well the general means by which such “storing up” is to be done.  It is to be done by self-abnegation—by forsaking the things of this world.

One of the most important—and most neglected—aspects of Jesus’ teaching here is the function of the listener in the world.  Jesus speaks to us of our being “the light of the world.”  We must recognize here that this teaching is functionally indistinguishable from the nexus between “treasure” and “light”: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.  If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (6:21-23, KJV).

What Jesus is describing here in terms of “light” is manifestly a generalized conception of “light.”  Light, in Jesus’ parlance, is simultaneously described in an active and a passive sense.  We exude light (or ought to) and are filled with light we allow inside (or ought to.)  “Light” simply exists, and our relationships to it can be proper or improper.  If we treasure the right things, we will be associated with light rather than with darkness.

The matter, however—if we act as though we might analyze it—is not so simple.  When dealing with the question of how we humans see what we need to see (or do not) or hear what we need to hear (or do not), the gospels all make some sort of reference to Isaiah 6:9-10:

“And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.  Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.”

Undeniably, the ignorance of the described audience is something inflicted upon them by God, as Isaiah relates the matter.  Matthew treats the matter more as if the people’s plight were of their own doing (and the other three gospels fall somewhere in-between.)  The gospels all stress the importance of people being enlightened, but it would be disingenuous to maintain that the gospels speak of plain truths taught plainly.

It must be noted, however, that it is not the idea of Jesus speaking plainly that the gospels present as the foundation of his ministry.  When Jesus needs to be blunt, he is so, but when speaking of the great themes that he goes about imparting, both Jesus and the gospels describe a scheme of instruction that is tinged with mystery.  There is something about Jesus that lends authority to his teaching.  This “authority” is not so simple as it might seem.  Matthew has, “ . . . the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (7:28-29).  This would seem to be a statement of straightforward power, if not for one thing—it would be difficult indeed to imagine that there was anyone with more overt “authority” than the scribes of Jesus’ time.

Jesus’ manifest authority, then, must have been a function of his persona.  It must have been a tremendous thing to hear him speak, or just to be around him.  At least, that is how the gospels read.  A skeptical reader, for example, might be reluctant to accept John’s assertion, regarding the Arrest, that upon hearing Jesus say, “I am he,” “they went backward, and fell to the ground.”  That is nonetheless how the text reads, and no concerted attempt either to understand or to believe the gospels can proceed reliably while ignoring the gospels’ references to the simple power of Jesus’ presence.

Again, it might be believed or not, but it is nonetheless intrinsic to the gospels that Jesus was possessed of an entirely rare potential for impact on people.  Surely, we are not to believe that the first disciples—described as they often are in pairs—were just guys who, for no discernable reason, had made pacts to the effect that they would jointly follow whatever self-proclaimed messiah happened down the road.  And it is not the case that Jesus always beckons his followers after first haranguing them.  Jesus speaks, and immediately people follow him.

The intimate followers of Jesus are not described as being merely privy to all of the details of his ministry.  They are described as being privileged to know the secrets that Jesus taught.  The common people were taught in parables and such, but Jesus’ inner circle were given the interpretations.  Or so we are told.  In a few instances Jesus’ painstaking parsings-out of parables are related to us.  In many other instances they are not.  The disciples, however, are described as being denied nothing in this regard: “and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples” (Mark 4:34).

As Luke has it: “And he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately. Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (10:23-24).

And that is not all.  As Matthew relates, Jesus told his disciples, “What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops” (10:27).  That is all well and good, a reasonable observer might say, but one can scarcely avoid making the relevant observation: This explicitly-expounded wisdom, transmitted from Jesus to his followers, such followers being instructed by Jesus to speak in light what they heard in darkness—well, where is it?

An immediate rejoinder from conventional Christianity might be the contention that this wisdom is the contents of the non-Gospel New Testament (or even the Church’s tradition), but that would scarcely address the more proximate problem of Acts 1, describing the post-Resurrection Jesus “being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”  And yet the disciples immediately after this had to cast about for some answer about the kingdom-crucial question of the conversion of the Gentiles?  The situation must be as ridiculous as it sounds.

The answer is plain.  The gospels describe the ministry of Jesus.  They do not describe its content, insofar as Jesus considered some such things to be pivotal and eternal.  The gospels are guides to our search—our search for the path, and for the gate.  This realization at least points up the silliness of arguing about the inerrancy of four awkwardly-lined-up accounts that are not theologically complete, nor were ever intended to be.  It also points up the tragedy of so much conflict over two millennia of people trying to force other people to see a salvation plan in a collection of writings that constitutes merely a salvation outline.

We Discover Our Beliefs

Of late I have been struggling with the notion of “faith orientations,” which I have described as things we discover—if we are willing—within ourselves.  At the outset, I probably should clarify the phrase “faith orientations.”  We believe many things at once, and we disbelieve many things at once, and we can have within ourselves veritable stew-pots of ideas—some cohering, some colliding—that constitute the scheme of our beliefs.  It is probably best to reckon that we do not “believe” this-or-that and “disbelieve” this-or-that.  It is difficult enough to know what to believe and what not to believe.  We do ourselves no favors and—most importantly—we do God no honor by trying to convince ourselves that we believe what we do not, or that we believe anything more than we really do.

We discover our beliefs, and we discover our beliefs typically when we are called upon to demonstrate the value we apply to this-or-that.  This all has a rather practical aspect, in that it is one thing to claim to believe some one thing absolutely, yet it is quite something else to claim a consciously-held scheme of beliefs.  As usual, I will appeal to the gospels to illustrate the matter.

I will continue with Matthew, wherein I have gotten to the part in which Jesus first describes his mortal fate.  In the course of his series of three descriptions of how he will suffer, Jesus offers quite a few teachings.  What does not seem to be generally understood about those teachings is their common theme of how values are assigned by the listeners.  Jesus does not so much tell his audience what to believe, but rather Jesus tells his audience to look to the values they have internalized—he asks them to discover what they believe, illustrated by what they value.

Jesus, immediately upon congratulating Peter for his confession of his Messiah (chapter 18), says he will give Peter the keys of the kingdom.  Whether Jesus refers to Peter (and/or his ilk and/or his followers) defining what is to be permitted, or deciding who is or is not to be held guilty of transgressions, one thing is certain: Jesus is placing on Peter a responsibility for value judgments.

And “From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and be raised again the third day.”  For this Jesus was rebuked by Peter, and Jesus tells Peter, “thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”  It is all about the things that Peter finds that he values—and the things that all of us find that we value.

This mode of analysis streaks through the ensuing passages.  Jesus asks, “what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”; Jesus tells us that our reward will be in accordance with our works.  What, is the implication, do we value, and how can we escape being judged in terms of our values, regardless of how we might wish to avoid examining them?  That is how we find out what we really believe.

Do the disciples value the heritage personified by the two ancient figures presented by God at the Transfiguration, or do they value “my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”?  The disciples are confronted with the examples of a tormented child, with their own status as children of the kingdom, and with the moral status of actual “little children.”  In each instance, the disciples are not presented first and foremost with rules, but rather with challenges about value judgments, and commands to act according to those judgments.  “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus in this part of Matthew weaves a gruesome tapestry threatening damnation—yes, damnation based on works—interspersed with calls to value the “little ones.”  The discovery and acceptance of values is the point: “How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which has gone astray?”

A trespassing “brother” is to be valued first and foremost, and to be regained if possible; the value of one’s faith community members are the key divine intervention; a “brother” is worth forgiving seventy times seven; the value one places on divine forgiveness is measured by one’s value placed on forgiving others; the value of marriage is inseparable from the person of the spouse—the logic of “value” drives on and on.  So often, what has been understood as Jesus making demands of his followers could be much better described as Jesus calling his followers to account according to their values—either recognized or latent.  That is the stuff of “belief” that really matters.

When Jesus finishes telling a young man that he ought to account his possessions as nothing against the opportunity to follow Jesus, the disciples consider their Master’s devaluing of wealth and ask, “Who then can be saved?  Jesus responds, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”  The doing, then, of the things of God ought to be the least of our concerns.  The valuing, then, of the things of God ought to be the greatest of our concerns.

To value something is to treasure it, and what we treasure we store within ourselves.  It always remains, and even when forgotten it can be brought again to view in the harrowing moments of our value crises.  To believe something, on the other hand, can be to force a value upon it, and such an artifice can wither and disperse when our attentions are drawn elsewhere.

Standing Apart from Ourselves

I ended the last post with:

‘“Bible-alone’ (that is, the contention that the Bible does its own interpretation, absent any divinely-intended participation of the organic workings-out of issues in the minds of readers) is a danger not simply in that it constitutes worship of the Bible.  That is really beside the point, and will scarcely be admitted to.  This-or-that-alone, however, stands apart from the teachings of Jesus not only because any such idea of isolation conflicts with the context-rich presentations of the gospels, but also because any such idea is an idol in itself.”

I must enlarge on the idea of “participation of the organic workings-out of issues in the minds of readers,” and I must show how this is important in “the context-rich presentations of the gospels.”  To do this, I must present some such “context-rich presentations” and then show how they can be viewed in terms of “organic workings-out.”  I will use Matthew, and in particular that part of the gospel that precedes Jesus’ first prediction of his death.

Early on, there is John the Baptist: “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  When Jesus comes upon Peter and Andrew, he says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  In both of these instances, the gospel is describing the listeners as challenged, not to consider the content of some argument, but to search within themselves for their true—though un-verbalized—faith orientations.  The point is not what the listeners can be made to believe, but rather what they can discover within themselves about what they already believe.

This leads to the Sermon on the Mount, and to the demands Jesus makes of his audience.  As ever when Jesus says what he requires, the age-old argument has been (regarding this and similar passages) whether or not Jesus is telling us what we must do to be saved.  For the “faith-alone” camp, of course, the contention is that the Sermon on the Mount tells the already-saved how to live The Christian Life.  Or as Moody Press’ Ryrie Study Bible says, “The Sermon on the Mount does not present the way of salvation but the way of righteous living for those who are in God’s family….”

Of course, the actual Sermon on the Mount begins with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Unless there is a contingent of “God’s family” who will spend a blessed eternity somewhere else than in “the kingdom of heaven,” it is difficult indeed to see how it might be argued that the Sermon “does not present the way of salvation.”  On the other hand, it is admittedly difficult to see how a person could make himself or herself poor in spirit, or how—within the conventional Christian mind-set—being “poor in spirit” could be a good thing.

The only logical solution to the matter is the contention that being “poor in spirit” is a state—presumably a somewhat-attainable state—in which the person’s personal and conscious proclivities are scraped aside, allowing to surface faith-orientations that are of a more abiding (and admittedly more mysterious) nature.  We are born into this world, never “knowing” why we possess feelings and drives as we do.  Why would be assume that more or less “religious” orientations would be fundamentally different?  As I have noted about John 3, we understand neither the earthly wind that passes above us nor the ultimate substance of being “born from above.”  Why would we assume that our faith orientations would not reside within us—or even independently of that corporeal “us”—waiting for us to discover?

As we see the Gospel of Matthew proceed, we see that Jesus probes precisely that matter.  Jesus repeatedly emphasizes the discovery within the person of the true substance of what the person believes.

When Jesus offers to go and heal a centurion’s servant, the centurion replies, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the world only, and my servant shall be healed.  For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.”

Jesus responds by saying, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”  The centurion has emphasized the structure of authority, not the particular content of Jesus’ ministry.  The centurion has addressed what he knows, not seeking to control or define the elements of his being that would cause him to care so about his servant, or to light upon Jesus as the hoped-for source of help.  The centurion has brought to Jesus what is rising up within himself, and Jesus greets it positively.

Then there is the woman afflicted with a hemorrhage, who invents her own methodology of healing: “For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.”  Jesus greets this positively also, saying, “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.”  “Thy faith” is the key, not the performance of some act.  Jesus is emphasizing something that resides within her, something of which she might have had no or little recognition.  Similarly, Jesus heals the daughter of a gentile woman, praising her faith when she had only approached him for his efficacy as a healer.  The gentile woman—in what presumably was an un-scripted moment—draws from within herself a contention that the truly divine would have mercy on all creatures.

In Matthew this train of thought has its culmination in Peter’s great confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  And “Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”  From Jesus’ baptism (and from Nathanael’s outburst in John 1) the obvious association of Jesus with “Messiah” was well-known to the disciples (and presumably discussed among them.)  The notion that Jesus’ declaration “flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee” is meant to be a literal statement will not stand scrutiny.  Unavoidably, Jesus is not telling Peter from where Peter got his knowledge—he is telling Peter that the identification of Jesus with “Messiah” is (and has been from some point) an internalized element of Peter’s faith orientation.  Jesus is describing Peter discovering something within himself.

Indeed, that is what faith is (and that is why two thousand years have not settled the question of where “faith” comes from that saves people.)  We do not work ourselves into believing, and we do not have belief loaded onto us in some un-worked-for moment.  Both of these notions cheapen the belief experience, and both of these notions exist in presumptuous isolation from how our existence really works.

God in his mercy did not completely destroy the humanity that rejected him.  That humanity—us—was consigned to a state that we all recognize in some form and cannot escape.  That state is one of fleeting injection into and flashing removal from the stream of time and space.  We do not know where we come from, and we do not know where our web of associations and motivations comes from.  These conditions must apply in our religious endeavors as elsewhere, but all too commonly we will not accept this.  We think we can stand apart from the nebulous selves within which—as we must prudently accept—might reside unrecognized, crucial elements of our faith orientations.

Falsehood in Isolation

Toward the end of my last post but one, I wrote that “at the most basic level pain and truth are one—we cannot help but be aware of our alienation from God, such alienation being both undeniable and acutely uncomfortable.”  I will add as well that, if we were not alienated from God, the very notion of “truth”—existing in its substance as a concept because there exists something called “falsehood”—would probably mean something different to us than it does now.  “Truth” means as much to us as it does because we are perpetually enmeshed in falsehood.

This is bound up with the essential reality I have tried to represent with “roused, readied, reaped.”  We are born into an existence of contrasts or conflicts among the elements of which we are aware.  We are born with needs—we know not why—into a universe of greater or lesser potential satisfaction of those needs—we know not why.  We can try to understand the elements of our existence, each in their isolation.  We can try to find out the truth of every such element.  None of this changes the fact that any conceit we have about understanding any such element is saturated with falsehood—any notion we have of any isolated element is ultimately unintelligible outside of the context of that element.

So we are born into a context of the contrasts or conflicts among the elements of which we are aware.  We are cut off from the seamless truths that might be afforded by communion with God.  This being the case, then the only way we can hope to have any understanding of our existence is through understanding how its elements interact.  Life hurries past us in motion.  We cannot see beginnings, or endings, or totalities.

None of this would seem to be all that profound, yet in the realm of religion there exists a stubborn tendency to act in practical denial of what I have described.  In a maddening way, we insist on acting like it is an act of piety to hinge our conceptions of existence on the presumptuous insistence that we can understand things being created from nothing or—which amounts to the same thing—things being created in un-relation to their contexts.  The gospels, however—despite their dealings with the mysteries of God’s creations—rely most heavily on describing things in relation to other things.

Sure, we can say that God made Creation out of nothing (and we can make a theological case for that if we choose), but God in the gospels (and in the writings that Jesus presents as authoritative) does not typically confront us with the “made out of nothing” scenario.  The beginning of Genesis describes a state, not a moment.  We are shown a chaos of already-existing elements, elements interacting with each other most vigorously.  We are presented in Genesis 1—as well as in John 1—with the sudden creation of light, but in both instances it is the interaction of light with dark that is emphasized.  We might decide that dark is simply the absence of light, but that is not our visceral, creaturely experience of the matter, and that is not how the matter is expressed in the gospels.  Dark is a thing, and light is a thing, and they are expected to interact.

So it is with the particulars of Creation.  Heaven is the separation of the waters; the dry land is the sequestering of the waters; the plants are generated from the earth; the lights of heaven are installed in their contexts and their timing; the swimming, the flying, and the creeping are described in the contexts of their habitations—even the creation of man “in the image of God” is contextual.  So also is Creation figured in John: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

Our existence is a matter of particulars in their contexts.  Things described in themselves are ultimately phantasms.  That is why understanding—to us—is a matter of contrasts, if not conflicts.  Worship of God is rendered unintelligible if this truth is forgotten.  On the one hand, we want to recognize God as beyond measure, yet we cannot really conceive of a God beyond measure, so we are flirting with a lie on our part.  Or we can call God huge—belittling him with the conceit that his size is bounded in reality as it is in our conceptions—and we are flirting with impiety.  Only a God of mercy could ratify our feeble efforts to bridge the inevitable gaps in our understandings.

No better example of this mercy—leavened with an undeniable element of challenge—might be found than in the introduction to John—and I understand that “introduction” to consist of everything up to the moment he meets the Samaritan woman in Chapter Four.  Just before that point, we are confronted by statements, one from Jesus and one from the Baptist, that can be seen to crash into each other—a distressing thought, unless we remember that such conflict is the way of truth, while apparently seamless ideologies are typically falsehoods.

Jesus says, “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.  But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”  In that very same Chapter Three, John the Baptist says, “The Father loveth the Son, and hath giveth all things unto his hand.  He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

To conventional Christianity, those two passages (residing, as I said, in uncomfortable proximity to each other) represent a puzzle to be solved.  Usually “doeth evil” is understood to mean “rejects the gospel and is deprived consequently of the ministrations of God’s grace and so descends farther and farther into depravity” or some such, while “believeth on the Son” is taken to be the controlling element, and the key to salvation.

We can choose to accept such reconciliations, if we desire, but the danger of such contrived reconciliation does not reside simply in the fact that it involves subordinating one passage to another in what can become a ceaseless, ever-tightening maelstrom of human pronouncements.  Additionally, such reconciliation—evincing the desire to eliminate the conflicts in our perceptions (which are really unsurprising contrasts springing from our limitations)—leads as well to our ignoring plain examples of conflicts presented to us manifestly with purpose in the gospels.  It is not, presumably, for nothing that the gospels present “the Law” as authoritative and normative, and then proceed to have Jesus tell us that Moses permitted divorce out of indulgence for his stiff-necked congregation.  Reconciliation of the texts in such cases is simple falsehood.

And then there is Jesus telling us that murder as a real and eternally punishable offense extends far beyond the bounds of anything contemplated in the Law (Matthew 5).  The contexts of human life, the conflicts of human interaction, the contrasts in human behaviors and outlooks—all these militate toward our understanding that we can “kill” each other by many means other than physical death, and all these have existed to bedevil every generation.  Only people who accepted being “hung out to dry” by the Old Testament teachings would have been primed to accept Jesus’ heightened expectations (and the history of Judaism shows many examples of people led to sublime enlightenment about moral issues precisely by being courageous enough to live forthrightly with unreconciled conflicts of understanding.)

Conflicts are truth.  Contrasts are truth.  Such things truly exist, and if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that conflicts and contrasts are interspersed with all of our perceptions.  To align ourselves otherwise is to flirt with idolatry.  This is something to keep in mind when the contention is floated that “Bible-based” Christianity (or, more particularly, “Bible-alone” Christianity) amounts to bibliolatry.  It is not so much “Bible worship” that is a matter of concern (and in any event few people will admit to being so aligned.)  What is really of concern with all of the “this-or-that-alone’s” is the fact that nothing is ever alone.

“Bible-alone” (that is, the contention that the Bible does its own interpretation, absent any divinely-intended participation of the organic workings-out of issues in the minds of readers) is a danger not simply in that it constitutes worship of the Bible.  That is really beside the point, and will scarcely be admitted to.  This-or-that-alone, however, stands apart from the teachings of Jesus not only because any such idea of isolation conflicts with the context-rich presentations of the gospels, but also because any such idea is an idol in itself.

Truth Mutual and Collective

There is no end-point to our search for truth, and there is every reason to believe that every step along the way can be painful.  This is not particularly insightful, and it is the merest recapitulation of my last post title of The Way of Pain and Truth.  What has occurred to me recently, however, is the extent to which our search for milestones of truth can often reveal itself—if we are fortunate—in the distressing discovery that we are on a completely mistaken path (again, not particularly insightful.)

I came across an example of this recently.  It has to do with arguments (hashed out over and over again among Christians) about the duties incumbent on believers regarding economic justice.  One side has to do with social duties worked out as governmental initiatives (think of arguments against “grinding the faces of the poor”.)  The other side has to do with governmental restraint predicated on concerns about inevitable overreach (think of arguments about the ruler wielding the sword of justice.)

One side thinks it virtuous of the government to make provision for what we currently call the “social safety net.”  The other side thinks it virtuous for the government to stay its hand, reckoning that private generosity and charity are both more effective and safer for the whole.  I’m sure, of course, that other people would frame the positions differently than I have, but I must admit that I am not concerned so much here about the claims of either side, as I am concerned about the premises of the argument to begin with.  It is the age-old question applicable in many contexts: Do we really know what we are talking about?

When Christianity is the belief system is question, the economic system at hand is usually recognizable as Western and (more-or-less) free-market (compared to communist or “undeveloped” nation systems.)  My own experience is that of the United States.  Here the question of greater or lesser governmental manipulation of the economy is paralleled by arguments about which is more “Christian.”  What is regrettable about this “Christian” argument is the fact that attempts to find biblical foundations for economic policy tend almost inevitably to be predicated on ostensible modern conditions that are really conjectures about the economies of “Bible days.”

In “Bible days,” (as the rhetoric tends) the economy was one of masters and servants (leaving aside certain niggling concerns about whether “servants”—or whatever they might be called—were really empowered participants in the economy.)  In the simple “Bible days” view, the market was free, although at any point the convictions (or the whims) of the rulers might be expressed as taxations or confiscations for this or that purpose.  The point for our discussion here is the fact that a lot of modern rehashing of biblical notions about economics is predicated on the simple master-servant relationship, shorn of complications, such that we might say that an employee in a modern privately-held company is the servant of the man or woman who owns the company.

This is precisely where the modern argument goes off the rails (though that does not stop it from plowing on.)  We need to ask ourselves, as I did above, “Do we really know what we are talking about?”  The predominant example of a privately-held company is a corporation affording its shareholders “limited liability” in some form or another.  The corporation is a legal person, and it is ultimately (or, rather, in the case of bankruptcy or proprietors’ malfeasance, inevitably) revealed to be a ward of the state.  The person or group who “owns” (the point is “controls”) the corporation has little incentive to own the corporation outright (and therefore to share in the losses in the event of the corporation’s demise.)

I do not say that this situation—a corporate economy hinging on limited liability—is good or bad.  What I do say, however, is that a corporate economy is not merely unrecognizable as against its supposed “Bible days” progenitor—it positively opposes its progenitor.  Our corporate economy is predicated on the non-existence nowadays of the crucial element latent in most musings about economic dealings in ancient times.  That is—however much we might like to speak today about the “private sector”—we really have no “private sector.”  The closest thing we have to a private sector resides in the rarified legal strata of holding companies and the like—organizations that possess (ultimately at our governments’ discretion) rights and privileges as proprietors of the government’s wards—corporations.

Ultimately, the corporations are ours—something that becomes apparent when bankruptcies of corporations, or incompetence or malfeasance of proprietors, leave us to pick up the pieces, both in terms of governmental clean-ups or bail-outs, and in terms of generalized burdens to the larger economy.  The biblical notions of master and servant (even to the extent to which we can understand them) simply do not apply to our economies in the developed Western world—in, that is, historic Christendom.

We have made for ourselves an economy that would be unrecognizable to our ancient forebears.  Most importantly (and this will probably expose my relative position on the safety-net-or-no-safety-net scale) we have made this anciently-unrecognizable economy by ourselves mutually, and for ourselves collectively.

The Way of Pain and Truth

We do not know what the “Good Thief” of Luke really knew about Jesus.  All we know is that the Good Thief was willing to face the truth, and that the Good Thief was willing in his agony to call upon Jesus.  The Good Thief was beset by pain, and he was beset by truth.  Our own experiences are usually less acute and well-delineated than those of that anonymous sufferer, yet we are as bounded as he by the encroachments of pain and truth.

We do not really know what we think we know about Jesus.  The most exacting description we have of Jesus—at least insofar as theology is concerned—is in the preface to John.  Honesty will admit that the preface to John is not really meant to be “understood.”  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” is both evocative and deeply-grounding in that it indicates that there is a deeper and more ineffable content to understanding (the import of “Word”) in the mind of God than we can ever comprehend.  However, that is also to say that we cannot “understand” that divine word.

The most that we can hope to obtain from the preface to John is a baseline of notions about our relationship to God.  Where this portion of the gospel first reaches out to touch us, as it were, is in verse 4: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”  Much of our thinking about God would comport better with the idea that the “light” of Jesus would give “life” to humanity, in that the divine command of “Let there be light” (and the ensuing truthful and unerring creation) would result in our very being.

But “the life was the light of men” seems to indicate something altogether different.  This actual passage would comport with the notion that the Creation with which Jesus was intimately involved is a Creation emanating truth.  God’s creation provides us with truth—we are not to spend our lives following anything or worshipping anything under this or that notion to the effect that objective reality is instead a mirage.  We might have to search endlessly for the answers to particular questions, but we do not have to search endlessly for truth itself.  Truth impinges upon us constantly—though that fact is not always comfortable to us.

As the preface nears its end, we are confronted by its general thematic conclusion (verse 14): “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.”  We will see in the narrative of the gospels what torments await Jesus as he works out the implications of that grace—of his patience toward humanity and his final, excruciating self-sacrifice in graciously giving himself up for punishment as though he was a sinner.

Verse 17 echoes the theme: “. . . . grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”  I wrote above, “The Good Thief was beset by pain, and he was beset by truth.”  To an infinitely greater extent, Jesus himself was beset by pain and beset by truth.  Those two elements—pain and truth—characterize humanity’s experiences to the extent to which we embrace them straightforwardly.

Unsurprisingly, the greatest of evils that humanity concocts operate on precisely the opposite of those two elements.  Instead of pain and truth, great evil offers the notions, first, that the partaker ought to experience pleasure and, second, that any objections to such self-indulgence are justified by assertions (contrary to basic notions of decency) that “the world” is devoid of truth, or that the dictates of common decency can be set aside in recognition of “higher” or “hidden” truth.

In the most unsparing analysis (as I have used in this blog) humanity can expect to suffer because (like the newly-created Adam) we reject communion with God in favor of the distractions of this world.  Our plight, then, is all-consuming as far as our earthly experiences are concerned, and in fact at the most basic level pain and truth are one—we cannot help but be aware of our alienation from God, such alienation being both undeniable and acutely uncomfortable.

In our daily lives, however, we can find innumerable ways to blur the truth and to dull the pain.  Such are not the paths to salvation.  What we must do is take up our cross.  The way of the cross trod by Jesus is unattainable for us.  The way of the Good Thief is not.

Embracing the Machine

I think I have arrived now at where I was headed all along.  I am not referring to a place, or a time, or a state of affairs.  I am referring to how we should feel about places and times and states of affairs.  What we should feel is misery.

Adam didn’t have to worry about places and times and states of affairs.  He could just be.  Places are about where one must go, and the distance to any destination is unavoidably to be reckoned on a scale of desirability.  So also with time.  We can entertain ourselves in looking forward to things (as we can entertain ourselves in looking toward desired horizons), but we cannot change the fact that we are devaluing thereby the here and now.  We are setting the stage for misery.

The matter of states of affairs is even more acute.  Adam found out something about himself when he ate of the forbidden fruit.  I emphasize Adam because he had greater depth and breadth of experience than Eve at this point, and it was from that extent of experience that Adam could draw the full measure of misery that was his lot.  He ate of the tree, and for the first time he was confronted directly with a state of affairs that was his own doing—and a first change in the state of affairs would make Adam or anyone aware of the whole dynamic to begin with.

Adam ate of the tree and came into possession of the knowledge of good and evil.  He was afraid of God, because he understood his own nakedness as an affront to the good order of God’s creation.  Yet Adam had sinned—if sin he did by being naked—out of ignorance.  Adam had no cause to be afraid of God, unless—unless—Adam became aware not of his transgression in being naked, but of his own sinful nature.  Adam had thrust God away—in desiring companionship in other form than communion with God—and the knowledge of good and evil had brought Adam’s nature to his own attention.

This was the first change of a state of affairs that would have disturbed Adam.  He had been threatened with death (what was “death”?), yet death would have meant nothing to Adam other than perhaps the negative experiences of illness or injury.  Adam existed in the garden, and he would still have existed after death.   But the change in the state of affairs between himself and his creator—that would have been undeniable.  That would be (indeed it was) the experience of “death.”

It is often said that God was merciful in relenting on Adam’s death penalty, and that what Adam suffered instead was a metaphorical “death of the soul.”  This is silly, because it is unnecessary massaging of the scenario.  Adam exchanged one body for another (the immortal one for the mortal one), but we might likewise say that in physical death we exchange one body for another.  We can call our physical demise “death” if we want (it’s as good a name as any).  If, however, we are to use the concept of “death” (with all its negative connotations) in any meaningful way, then the process of our experience must be an experience of loss.

Adam experienced “death” in a certain way (and we might ascribe mercy to God in not having been more severe toward Adam), but the point is that Adam experienced "death" in the only way that he reasonably could.  Adam experienced the death of moving to a state of affairs of alienation from God.  That is the story of what Adam had to lose, and he lost it.

From that point on Adam knew what it was like to experience moral condemnation.  His every moment after eating the fruit and still being naked would have been a moment of sin—even as he hurried to cover himself—because sinfulness had become the pervasive and persistent state of affairs.  Now nakedness was sinful indeed.  Indeed, every conception that existed in the mind of Adam was tinged with sin.  Which brings us back to the notions of time and place and states of affairs.  In our condition, all such things—even things so elemental as dimensions—are occasions of sin and misery.

It is of no value to deny the misery that attends the Machine of our existence.  We must embrace that misery and turn it to the refinement of our moral selves.  We must reckon that the only true joy we can create is the joy we bring to others, and that the only true joy we can experience we owe to the selfless ministrations of others.

Frustrating the Machine

Jesus, in Luke 6, says in the Sermon on the Plain, “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.”  He then describes very many other bad things which, when happening to the faithful, ought to be a source of great joy.  Since these occasions of great joy ought not to be accompanied by swelling of pride, and since enduring such perhaps-not-so-joyous occasions might be best accomplished by adopting a distanced view of one’s own experiences, it would only make sense to understand Jesus’ prescriptions in the light of the extinction of self.

Moreover, the parallel passage in Matthew 5 says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The only poverty like that described here (at least in keeping with the gospels overall) would be poverty in regard to that which animates the individual.  Though the quoted passage is different from that in Luke, a commonality can be construed around the concept of self-extinction.

Both Matthew and Mark follow the Transfiguration with the disciples’ questioning of Jesus about the prophesied appearance of Elijah as the End approaches.  The account in Matthew merely describes the similarity between how Elijah (that is, John the Baptist) was treated and how Jesus (“the Son of man”) would be treated.  Mark’s gospel, on the other hand, has a description less of similarity and more of unity:

“And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought; But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.”

Elijah is understood as shrinking in prominence, and indeed that is the general trend of the gospels’ treatment of John the Baptist.  Both of these Bible heroes—if indeed they are so much as individuals—reconcile themselves to becoming less and less.

And of course, in John, the great theme of the extended final discourses is the diminishment of the selves of the faithful, as they are subsumed into the great Vine tended by God and peopled by disciples who become absorbed as appendages.

And as for Luke?  Here the theme starts to become even more fascinating, as we can see in the story of the Good Thief:

“And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.  And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

This story is heartening for the Good Thief, of course, but it accords only roughly with any expectations based on conventional theology.  “Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” is stirring language, of course, but it does not relate of necessity any particulars of conventional theological understanding on the part of the Good Thief.  Moreover, it grates against the expectations of those conventions that Jesus could ascribe salvation to a person with a checkered past and who—given the agonies of the story—might have hours’ worth of opportunities for impiety or dark ideations.

Peter, it must be noted, was the recipient of Jesus’ exclamation, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,” but the echoes of that blessing did not last long.

Certainly, however, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” is hopeful.  One might wonder if the continual, graciously-offered chance to return to “paradise” encapsulates a surprising offer to all of us, at any moment.

I still have in mind the notion of self-extinction, of course.  Is that really such a strange notion?  After all, it is the willful assertion of self on the part of Adam that is the best explanation of God’s assessment that “it is not good that the man should be alone.”  God brings the woman to Adam, and the first man exclaims, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”   Adam’s take on the matter could lead in two directions: either he could identify his interests with that of the woman (extinguishing himself in the service of his loved one’s interest) or he could—as he did—rate the value of her similarity to himself by what the relationship could do for him.

Adam did not celebrate Eve as a person in herself.  Adam did not practice self-extinction in his chance in paradise.  Adam did not hollow himself out, as it were (that is, extinguish himself) in the service of the relationship, and perhaps that might seem too much to ask.  On the other hand, that is exactly what Jesus did for mankind.

Did Jesus grant the Good Thief a guarantee of salvation, or did he grant him another in a replete succession of salvation opportunities throughout his life?  If self-extinction (either grace-mediated or graciously-supplied along with unmerited faith, or what-have-you) is as important as the gospels seem to treat it, then any occasion leading to such self-extinction should be celebrated (paradoxically celebrated, but celebrated nonetheless.)

I am reminded of the words of “comfort” (if they might be so called) that Jesus bestows on the “Daughters of Jerusalem” as they witness his path to the Crucifixion:

“. . . weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children; For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.”

This, I contend, is a description of the operation of the Machine.  Life grinds up and spits out the people who travel through it.  Salvation does not reside in conceits about living an “abundant life” by any recognizable personal measure, and salvation does not reside in any notion of riding blissfully above life’s struggles.  Salvation frustrates the operation of the Machine by refusing to provide grist for its mill.  Salvation resides in the process (or better yet, the attempt) of casting self aside in the service of God.