Gnosticism and the Accumulation of Scheiss
ROCK ISLAND, IL Someone ought to write a novel that opens with this sentence: “Les Moore was a walking contradiction, but then again he was also a Gnostic.”
Or maybe someone should just use that as a wedge into a really crisp explanation of how, at a time when Gnosticism has staged a come-back, we have managed to become astonishingly materialistic.
Commence! (as the Frogs say).
Here’s a working description of Gnosticism that will serve the present purpose without doing any undue violence to the ancient—to say nothing of the contemporary—nonsense:
At the heart of Gnosticism is a contempt for the body and its life in the contemptible material world. Creation and Fall, according to the Gnostics, were the same event, which is a way of saying that our state of true Grace was a kind of spiritual preexistence from which we “fell” not into sin but into the physical creation, which itself is evil. Eating of the tree was not the decisive moment. The gross act of eating became possible only because we found ourselves in a base physical realm. We erstwhile spirits now inhabit a material world in bodies that are also “fallen” inasmuch as they inhibit us from ranging freely as spirits, unencumbered by the flesh and the stuff of the world. We are condemned to spend our exile in Creation attempting liberation from it by acquiring gnosis—that is, knowledge (often esoteric)—and otherwise longing for the realm of pure mind or pure spirit, which we can reinhabit if only we’ll die.
We can also reinhabit it by means of technology, but more of that anon.
What I have described here is a heresy the ancient Church had the good sense to condemn. It is also our current, I might even say our default, mode of consciousness, though we remain for the most part unconscious of it. It may even be the One True ‘False Consciousness’ our brothers and sisters over in Dialectical Materialism seem to be in desperate search of (and have, let it be allowed, in some degree hit upon).
It is our default mode of consciousness because, in the main, we have made a cultural and economic ideal of living at several removes from creation or ‘nature.’
Our education is gnostic inasmuch as it is almost entirely oriented toward the life of the mind, complete with assurances that its “beneficiaries” will engage in as little bodily labor or physical involvement with nature as necessary, which is a way of saying that our idea of labor is that it should involve as little labor as possible. (Indeed, we’ll obviate the need for any physical exertion not specifically copulative.) Accounting majors are not “studying” accounting because they want to be carpenters or roofers. They are studying accounting (and others are studying History or English or Math) because they hope to spend the rest of their lives in well-paying jobs that require no more physical exertion than what will keep them from falling out of their chairs. Physical labor—the labor that is beneath those credentialed by gnosis—will be done by the ungraduated.
At this point it is useful to remember that St. Augustine railed against those card-carrying Gnostics and former pals, the Manicheans, for refusing to pick their own food.
Sound like anyone we are?
But we’ve one-upped them. We refuse to get from the first to the second floor by any other means than pushing a button and waiting for a moving platform with automatic doors to do the work of the legs. We will not cut our grass unless we can sit astride a riding mower. We will not open cans without electric can-openers, nor brush our teeth unless the toothbrush itself moves. We refuse to go where we need to go unless getting there involves nothing more than applying with our right foot a very slight amount of pressure to a pedal, while a whole combustion chamber full of liquid slaves does its explosive work of substitutionary perambulation. We won’t eat unless we can idle in the minivan and shout out an order for a Bacon Double By-Pass prepared by God-Knows-Whom working with “food” that comes from God-Knows-Where. We won’t plant, harvest, cook, or clean. In short, we won’t do shit—and we have plenty of shit to show for it.
We’re the Neognostics. We long to be delivered from the life of the body, notwithstanding its having been declared “very good” by its Creator, a founding pronouncement ratified by that same Creator in the Incarnation.
But a high doctrine of Creation and a robust doctrine of the Incarnation aren’t exactly in high demand at the Church of the Hip Jesus (http://www.ComeRockWithGod.com).
Which is to say that if education is essentially gnostic, mainstream evangelical Christianity is quintessentially gnostic, especially that part of it that its adherents are pleased to call ‘eschatology.’ Indeed, one of the most lucrative forms of Gnosticism is ‘Rapture Theology,’ popularly imagined in the apocalyptic delusions that line the shelves of the Family Christian Bookstore. We owe this strange phenomenon to a man named John Darby, who apparently couldn’t be bothered with Church history or the decisions of ecumenical councils.
And a couple of really wealthy theological ignoramuses wielding limited literary talent owe him even more.
The problem, of course, is that these Left Behinds have grossly misled a lot of theologically unarmed and unprepared readers and essentially supplied them with a gnostic eschatology that assures them an exit strategy from the vile world. Above all, they have given Christians of a particularly ignorant and historically uninformed stripe easy permission to despise this wonderfully refulgent world. Whereas orthodoxy (to say nothing of the New Testament) has always regarded pilgrimage through creation as the only means of salvation, we now have salvation by flight from it. So easy a doctrine of salvation will lead, and obviously has led, to a disregard for the creation—as when former Secretary of Interior James Watt, when asked whether future generations might need the federal land he opened to mining and logging, famously replied, “I don’t know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”
As our man from Kentucky has said, “No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to ‘spiritual’ subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history’s most destructive economy, then disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.”
But how is it that, given our disregard for the material world, we have become so materialistic? How can we at once think so little of the stuff of creation and yet continue to accumulate so much stuff?
I attempted (among other things) an answer to this in a piece titled “Wendell Berry’s Vindication of the Flesh” (in Christianity and Literature 56:2 [Winter 2007]). I excerpt a few passages here:
Whatever work most people actually do aspire to is mental—increasingly if not exclusively—and they aspire to it with all the sanctions of an educational system incapable of telling them the attendant dangers. This is a snobbish reaching, and it indicates not just indolence but ignorance—ignorance of the extent to which we are dominated by mind and long to escape into it by minimizing bodily exertion—which escape on Berry’s account always places at a discount the life of the body in the world. Being a stockbroker is good; being a stock boy is not. Trying a courtroom case is good work; cleaning a courtroom floor is not. Or as Berry has well said, “you may hold up your head in polite society with a public lie in your mouth or other people’s money in your pocket or innocent blood on your hands, but not with dishwater on your hands or mud on your shoes” (Hidden Wound 113).
Berry’s resistance to innovation and the labor-saving gadgets by which we avoid lifting boxes and cleaning floors is not, as his critics say, nostalgic. It is not sentimental. It is not even curmudgeonly. It is a resistance deeply set in his refusal to countenance the old heresy. It is a resistance predicated on the conviction that absenting the body, whether in farming or in writing or any human endeavor, accords with dualism, gives us easy permission to privilege mind over body, and necessarily leads to the superstition that we can disregard matter indefinitely so long as we put our detached minds to it.
But it leads to other, more destructive mischief as well: ultimately a “dualistic society dominated by mind,” he says, “involves a number of dangers, of which the degradation and destruction of the material world is only the most obvious” (HW 126).
A society dominated by mind (or “mind-centered,” as Berry elsewhere calls it [Standing By Words 179]) will gleefully welcome all the labor-saving devices it can until in every human endeavor the need for rousing the slumberous somatic mass has been obviated. The triumph of techne over soma states plainly what we might as well call the gnostic assault on creation; it explains why Berry says that a new version of the old dualism is always implicit in the technological revolution, a dualism “always destructive, and now more destructive than ever” (What are People For? 190), the aim of which is to privilege the mind and slight the body and in doing so to render the body obsolete. Few seemed to understand this twenty years ago when Berry touched that technological nerve by registering his dissent from the computer, and in twenty years their number hasn’t grown. But Berry was asking of the technological fundamentalists a fundamental question: is the moral life so complex, and are the conditions of existence so inimical to it, that theological considerations must be brought to bear on the question of technological involvement? And the answer he gave was Yes. For “[p]eople who are willing to follow technology wherever it leads are necessarily willing to follow it away from home, off the earth, and outside the sphere of human definition, meaning, and responsibility” (SBW 159-60). In such a sphere, who needs a body? Indeed, disembodiment is once again the “chief of worldly conveniences.”
(The wonder remains that Berry, in the 1960s, could utter so pertinent a remark for the ghostly denizens of cyberspace forty years later.)
And now, nearly a quarter-century hence, all of us who claim to despise the inveterate Gnostic tendencies have to confront the ugly truth of our having followed technology “outside the sphere of human definition, meaning, and responsibility.” In doing so we will be obliged to admit that when we park riding lawnmowers in our garages, we will need treadmills (invariably aimed at TVs) in our basements; that when we take elevators at the department store, we will need stair-climbers at our “health” clubs; that when we long for the realm of pure mind, we will need to pull down our barns and build greater ones for the things we accumulate.
The peril of confronting an ugly truth such as this is that doing so brings us uncomfortably to the heart of the contradictions I mentioned at the start. Having removed the body from its necessary work, we have discovered that the work, being necessary, has to be done by something. And that something has been the machine. This is why Berry says the difference between the realm of pure mind and pure machine is “negligible.” (WPF? 195). Something has to do the needful work we are no longer willing to do. Of necessity we accumulate—first by negligence, later by habit, and always by moral weakness—those things with which we render ourselves obsolete. For it is simply the case that when we refuse to accord proper respect or assign proper responsibility to the body, we must necessarily acquire replacements for it—until at last we inhabit what Fitzgerald called a “new world, material without being real” (Gatsby 169 ). Having dreamed for the realm of pure mind, we have awoken in the realm of pure machine, “materialistic” as charged. Is it any wonder that we see so much drug-abuse, alcohol-abuse, and sexual abuse? Is it any wonder that we treat the body as a kind of pleasure machine? We don’t know what the body is for, and so when we do use it, we abuse it.
Which is to say that we are reconciling ourselves to incoherence. Our name is Les Moore, and we are legion.
Next week, part two. I’ll pick up on the distinction between pilgrimage through and flight from the world. I want to suggest that the technological revolution and its consequent ecological havoc present certain problems for orthodox Christianity.
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This is excellent. I particularly like the idea that for the gnostic, the original sin was not eating the apple, but eating at all. I’m sure I’ll steal that line at some point.
It is true that fundamentalism is an accommodation to gnosticism, but also to Enlightenment individualism. The believer needs no church or sacrament or tradition, but only his own personal interpretation; he is his own priest and pope, and from his rulings there is no appeal. “Church” is not about salvation (one gets that on one’s own) but about “fellowship.” The fundamentalist cannot effectively oppose the Enlightenment because he is too much a part of it.
Having said that, the Catholic and the sacramental Protestant does not escape the same charge. Since the Enlightenment, theology has retreated to purely ecclesial concerns. We leave the world to itself and to “science” (now understood not so much as wisdom about creation as power over it), and the theologian rarely ventures into the world to critique it. Of course, theology must be concerned with purely doctrinal matters, but it can’t end there. And at one time, it didn’t. An Aquinas or an Antoninus or a Bonaventure advised not only popes and bishops, but princes and businessmen; they were expected to say something about the affairs of this world, as well as of the next.
Personal salvation is, of course, job one. But we still have the political task of building up the Kingdom of God. This requires a theology that is out in the world, a theology that takes names and kicks ass. We are being advised today by many in the Church that things like economics are none of our business, and that the popes and bishops would be well-advised to stick to their knitting and leave the science to them. This is nothing less than the smoke of Satan on the altar of the Church. In the 60’s and 70’s, we assumed that this smoke would always come from the left, but there is quite a bit of smoke on the right, and it ain’t incense.
It’s an enormous falsehood to imply – even obliquely – that the “Left Behind” eschatology is an example of mainline Protestant theology. There is nothing mainline about it; the Lutherans, for instance, have said it is “at odds with the biblical revelation.” Similar views can be found in the writings of Methodists and, I’m confident, other mainline denominations.
Rake Epiphany…
Several years ago, I was raking walnuts out of the yard that had fallen from the tree. The rake was beginning to fall apart under the strain. It was a bamboo rake with the tines held together by a pair of stamped metal plates, one of which had fallen…
Ditto to David. I assume you meant mainstream, not mainline. Rapture theology is endemic to groups coming out of the radical reformation and revivalist movements (Baptists, Pentecostals, and Evangelicals, largely). It’s pretty foreign to mainline denominations.
Otherwise, good word. Scientism is pretty squirrely when talking about ends but they’re undoubtedly gnostic.
I gratefully accept the reproof of David and forestwalker. I meant something more like mainstream evangelicals so-called and will make the necessary change.
What a strange thing to say, that “But we’ve one-upped them.” because we refuse to labor. Facts suggest that labor alone is poorly compensated and totally “at will” – and not at labor’s will. Why would anyone seek to be poorly compensated, and often simply poor? Why would we not choose those occupations that promise some protection from the poorhouse?
Once you’ve decided that you would rather be better compensated, you are on the less-labor-is-good path, because suddenly, and particularly in 2 wage earner families, time is in short supply. Many, or perhaps even most, of our labor saving devices are in fact time saving devices – and who in this modern world has all the time they might desire? Certainly the poor do, but we have already discounted that path.
I think your connection of “gnostic” to “materialistic” is interesting, but inherently flawed by the inaccurate premise that people choose sedentary work over labor because they don’t want to labor. Basically, people don’t want to be poor – and labor and poor (at least relatively poor and speaking probabilistically) are nearly synonymous.
Jason,
Thanks for the above. I think we’re profoundly ambivalent about being physical. Think of anti persperant; what a strange idea!
You might want to take a look at this article, which I’ve found very helpful in thinking about corporeality and the incarnation:
http://www.metropolit-anthony.orc.ru/eng/eng_02.htm
Between Metropolitan Anthony Bloom and Wendell Berry (and Philip Sherrard as well, who knew Berry and vice versa, I think), there’s a deep understanding of the physicality of Christianity.
Regards,
Peter Moore
It seems like an unhealthy pathology to label any person, place, idea or thing one dislikes or disagrees with as heretical.
In this article alone people who participate in the modern educational system, persons who choose to follow an physically untaxing vocation, anyone who uses electricity or fossil fuels for reason of convenience, and most of evangelical Christianity, are all condemned as heretics.
Not only heretics mind you, but heretics who believe the word to be created to enslave souls by a malevolent demiurge.
The only ones who seem to be able to free them from their enslavement to 3rd century heresy are the traditionalists who imbibe from their virtuous communities the knowledge necessary to cast the heresy out with syncretistic readings of Burke, Belloc, Berry.
While Gnosticism did, in most of its strains, despise the physical world, its main belief is that you were saved by knowledge – often esoteric knowledge. Gnositicsm posited some form of objective truth.
The United States is not a gnostic nation. Nor is it materialistic. The US is what I call a “Functionalist Consumerist” society where we are more concerned with getting more for less and what it can do for us. We are always after the “bigger, better deal” and the “effortless results” in personal change.
The United States has also effectively renounced Objective Truth in favor of “my truth” and “your truth”
I expore that more here at <a href=”http://deaconslant.blogspot.com/2009/05/is-it-true-vs-does-it-work.html” title=”The Deacon’s Slant”.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
ummm make that at <a href=”http://deaconslant.blogspot.com/2009/05/is-it-true-vs-does-it-work.html” title=”The Deacon’s Slant”
Yikes she’s a beaut. I’ll see your “Bacon double By-pass” and raise ya an Egg McCoronary. This baby has a nice acceleration and handles well and any abuse heaped on that large herd of folks who seem to think pining away for destruction is better than living now is fine by me. Money as moloch has tainted religion just like everything else in this spectacle-rich boredom of modern life.
My favorite technological “advancement” is the leaf blower. It’s particularly wonderful when being used to blow a winter’s accumulation of sand off the driveway. The hapless clod stands there in a cloud of dust that would startle a Bedouin…blowing the dust and sand around and then after they’ve left…the cloud settles down for another session next week…that is, if it is not more easily picked up and deposited in the streams after a rain because of it’s sorting by forced air. The broom, shovel and wheelbarrow would have likely taken less time to do the task and one could have re-used the sand but then, the object is “weekly maintenance”. There’s just nothing as lovely as hearing one’s catalog of migratory bird calls over morning coffee interrupted by a damnable leaf-blower at 6:30 am. It frosts me almost as much as their little piles of “clean-up” from their property….what we refer to as the “New York Forest” (an edited and gussied woods with high production values but no future forest as opposed to my “messy” woods) deposited on my side of the road because natural areas are “unkempt” and so landfill is a perfect use.
The wife previously placed a Fatwa on any future displays of petulance like when I picked up a pile and arrayed it on their newly cleaned driveway with a hastily scrawled love-note attached by duct tape to the branches.
If our gadgets save so much time how come everybody complains so much about not having enough time?…or money?
Next time the ghastly infernally noisy blowers show up at the neighbors, I intend to march down the hill and scream “Damn ye Nazi NeoGnostics” and then come back up and shower the dust off after hearing the one say to the other: “Barbudo loco”.
Jason, you’re not short on responses, but I don’t think this conversation should lack the mention of a certain insight by the late Lionel Basney, professor of English at Calvin College and friend of Wendell Berry. In his book “An Earth-Careful Way of Life” (InterVarsity, 1994), two consecutive sections of a chapter are titled “We Are Not Materialists” and “We Are Materialists.” The core moral issue in Christians’ engagement with the world, says Basney, is not the so-called materialism that is often preached against, but greed. True Christians would be true materialists: moderate in the scale of their working, respectful of the materials they use, for the sake of the Creator, and so on. We are indeed “materialists” of a sort in our obsession with accumulating and exploiting materials, but we are not true materialists, people who love materials, as opposed to craving them.
This also reminds me of a favorite quotation from Montaigne, which is the epigraph at the beginning of “The Unsettling of America”: “Whoso hath his mind on taking hath it no more on what he hath taken.”
[...] http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=3048 [...]
Bishop Michael Marshal of the Church of England once said: “We were designed to use stuff and love people, but we ended up loving stuff and using people.”
There is a lot of truth to that. I think that one of the reasons we have so little time is that we spend our money on stuff to make us happy, and then waste our time with the stuff trying to make it to make us happy.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
(Let me try the link again)
I’ll echo Dan’s 2:23 comment and Bob Banning’s by saying that it is often mistaken to label as a product of heresy a state that is in fact a product of several vices.
For instance, an aversion to labor is sloth.
It is difficult to refute sloth intellectually, but it need not be reinterpreted as a heresy.
As for labor-saving devices (saving what from whom or whom from what?), I scrolled through this article using voice recognition software instead of the keyboard and mouse. For the computer to understand, my speech must become enunciated, clipped and monotonal. I hope I never get used to it.
But the exercise lets me see how strange a computer, keyboard and mouse are. Others have noticed that man is shaped to fit his tools. Speaking strangely shouldn’t surprise me: observe the odd motions of the hands and fingers of a computer user, and the members’ relation to a largely immobile body that uses thirty keys to communicate!
“So easy a doctrine of salvation will lead, and obviously has led, to a disregard for the creation—as when former Secretary of Interior James Watt, when asked whether future generations might need the federal land he opened to mining and logging, famously replied, “I don’t know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”
Please refer to “http://www.getreligion.org/?p=587″
I realize this site emphasizes the idea that environmentalism
is not just for lefties, and that’s okay, but I think Sec. Watt
deserves better than to have a bogus quote hung around his neck.
-Rob
A note concerning the above post. I recognize the snippet quoted was technically correct, but as the official transcript shows, the following text omitted makes it clear what Watt was actually saying:
“I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.” (my emphasis)
An additional discussion can be found at Clayton Cramer’s blog at:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/2005_02_06_archive.html
(scroll down to “Bill Moyers Appologizes”)
-Rob
An aversion to labor is sloth? I think you are much mistaken. Sloth is an act, not an aversion (a feeling). And all of us share an aversion to pointless labor, and we often act on that aversion – does that make us slothful?
And what is so great about labor? Isn’t Jesus supposed to have said something about this? How does that go,
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28″So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31″Therefore do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?’ or “What shall we drink?’ or “What shall we wear?’ 32For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Hmmmmm. Sounds pretty slothful to me.
Sloth is not just “not working.” Sloth is avoiding your duties. Remember, that the same Bible that you quote tells us that he who doesn’t work should not eat (Paul) and that we are to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow.”
Actually, excessive work can be tied to sloth. Working to avoid family or homelife or to avoid religous duties is just as slothful as not working. We are commanded to work and we are also commanded to rest.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
I would acknowledge Jake’s point about poverty–but only to a degree and I think it misses the point of this article, which does not really address laboring for living. Regrettably, most choose not labor because it does not pay. But the issue goes beyond that. Once we have been payed, there is plenty of work to be done that we still avoid, such as the labor of tending to our property or growing some of our own food. Why? To save time? That goes back to the implication that the time we spend laboring is less valuable then the time we spend doing something else. I don’t have a dishwasher (due to circumstances, not virtue) so I do the dishes by hand. I have just taught my five-year-old to help by rinsing. If we had a dishwasher, we could spend that time doing–what? Playing catch, going for a walk, whatever. Those are also great things to do (and things we do do). But they are not more valuable than the time my son and I spend standing next to each other doing dishes. This is a tiny example (on par with Weasly’s rake), but there are a thousand examples of how we save “time” doing work together so that we can spend time together doing other things that are not more valuable and often less valuable.
Weasly’s rake reminds me of the wonderful satisfaction I derived one evening in October from a small amount of work followed by prayer. My parish was preparing for its annual food festival. I spent a couple of hours tiding up the grounds–pulling weeds and dead shrubs, etc.–until it was time for Vespers. I got to read Ninth Hour. As I read, I felt incredibly content. I noticed that I was more still and more focused on the prayers than I hardly ever am. The level of joy I felt was completely out of proportion to the amount of work I had done (or even the amount praying, if one could say such a thing).
Phil, you are completely correct. Sloth is not just “not working” or laboring or whichever. It is quintessentially avoiding duties.
Paul, on the other hand, is to be taken with a grain of salt.
And just so you know, I don’t think we are commanded to do anything. Impelled, maybe, but not commanded. All God’s children must eat or die, for example, but death is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Jake
Labor one chooses is often a meditation.
“A new commandment I give to you, love (agapao) one another; even as I have love you, that you also love one antoher.” (John 13:34)
That sounds like a pretty clear command from Scripture. We can refuse to obey the commandments of God, but that refusal always has a price.
So I would say that we are clearly commanded to do certain things. But we are never required to do them. Jesus said: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15)
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
That, Phil, is exactly my point and our difference. I believe we differ on the whole idea of a God commanding anything.
In any case, what is a commandment but a requirement? It’s not like you can completely trust any translation, but saying you are commanded but not required takes a very liberal interpretation of the word “commanded”.
Jake
Mr. Peters,
Thank you for an interesting essay. I am looking forward to part 2.
Gnosticism, at the least, is ungrateful for the beauty and wonder of creation; of which humans are an integral part. It can mutate into a form of self-loathing. At it’s worst; it is pride. That is the idea that certain creatures can aspire to the level of the creator, “if only” or “when” (they learn enough, etc.).
[quote][...] We’re the Neognostics. We long to be delivered from the life of the body, notwithstanding its having been declared “very good” by its Creator, a founding pronouncement ratified by that same Creator in the Incarnation. [...][/quote]
Belief in the Incarnation requires that a person realize how small they are in the scheme of things; yet accept that they are loved as individuals by the Creator of the universe. This is a “mind-blowing” thought to those who have succeeded in carving out their place in the world. No wonder Jesus talked about accepting the Kingdom of God as a child!
We are redeemed by Christ’s crucifixion (On the cross, He becomes a flawless “sin offering” to atone for our sins.) because no matter how we strive; we are helpless to “save” ourselves. We can never rise above our status as a “created being.” We can not be equal to or perfect as the Creator. To assume that the the leap from creature to creator can be made by our own actions (such as the acquisition by knowledge or the loathing of creation) is prideful.
Only by the humble acceptance of this truth (by faith, not knowledge) can we accept the Incarnation. Therein lies the mystery.
True humility is difficult to obtain. We have to humble themselves to ask for the humility to accept on faith what we can not understand by reason. Which in turn gives us more more humility and faith. The more faith that God allows us to have; the more humble we become. The more we humble ourselves before God, the more faith we acquire. (False humility, on the other hand is easy to voice and to believe.).
YSIC,
Esmeralda Pearl
P.S. To Phil and Jake…
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” ~ Matthew 22:37-40
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” John ~ 14:15
Jake,
Is it your position, then, that there is not such thing as a “command?” That seems to be what you are saying.
God commands His people to live a certain way. He also is the one who empowers us to do this. The only way we can live in and obey God’s commandments is through His grace.
To say that, because we have free will, God does not command us in anything is to say that there is no such thing as a commandment.
Or do you hold that the list in Exodus is “The Ten Suggestions.”
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Phil, I don’t actually hold to the 10 Commandments much. We don’t agree on God – that is the root of our difference. However, in my discussions here I seek to learn through thoughtful dialog, not to disrupt, and so I minimize the God issues and focus on the logic, to the extent I can be said to be logical and to the extent I can recognize and illuminate illogic.
I disagree with much of what I read here, sometimes vehemently, but I like the tenor of the conversations and I would like very much for things to stay that way.
“Seek first to understand” is one of the “commandments” I try to live by. Of course, I often fall short.
Beyond that, I am more likely to consider myself a new testament kind of guy. That old testament stuff is a little too bloody and authoritarian for my taste.
Jake
Jake,
[quote]“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” ~~Matt. 5:14
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” ~ Matthew 22:37-40
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” John ~ 14:15[/quote]
There isn’t any “wiggle room” on this subject. The “Old Testament” (Old Covenant) is the base (and many of the events are “pre-figurements”) of the “New Testament” (New Covenant). Don’t forget that Jesus was an observant Jew.
True, the Old Covenant was bloody. In a tribal society force against others outside of the tribe is the norm (it’s called survival). Also, the rough justice of stoning was meant to keep people in line regarding who’s kid is who’s kid. Nothing disrupts a social group more than “out of the norm (accepted)” sexual behavior.
You can’t dismiss the Old Covenant. Christianity and Judism are entertwined. Jesus Christ perfected the Law of the Old Covenant. He did not ignore or abolish it. We knowingly sin at our peril. In my denomination such a sin is called a “Mortal Sin” it cuts us off from God. (We can return into God’s grace by the true repentance of and the confession of our sin.)
By the grace of God; I am a conservative, observant, Roman Catholic Christian. I believe that Christ’s mercy is infinite and everlasting.
Esmeralda, we approach religion from vastly different viewpoints – and my viewpoint is likely something that can only be disruptive on this site. I agree with some of what you say. But not all of it. Nonetheless, where it is a matter of personal religious belief, I respect your choices and leave you to them.
Jake
Jake,
I respect your views too. You may call me “EP”
I believe that the Holy Trinity loves each and every one of us and wants us to live in joy and peace with them for eternity.
Maybe it’s my age…But…I’m reaching the point where I pretty much think that my job is to love God’s creation and pray the “Lord’s will” regarding just about everything. (By the mercy and grace of God; I hope to surrender myself more and more to God’s holy will.)
All we humans can do is to try, with the grace of God, to show love to one another. That doesn’t mean that we don’t speak out, rather that we speak with concern and love.
I’ve found the 10 Commandments to be a baseline for behavior with the Beatitudes and the Corporal/Spiritual Works of Mercy layered on as commentary, advice and example.
God Bless you Jake! ~~EP
Very well written, Mr. Peters. Your thoughts are spot-on.
EP, the 10 commandments are a guideline mostly for what you shouldn’t be doing, the beatitudes the guidelines for what you should be doing. Obviously, the beatitudes are more perfect because morality is about doing things correctly, rather than not doing things, even thought there are things we ought not to do. It is late in the afternoon, yet all day long I have not killed even one person, nor seduced another man’s wife. This is not sufficient to make me moral. Only the beatitudes can give a blessing.
EP, stick with Matthew – stoning was and is barbaric, and unlicensed sex is not an excuse. Estimates of inaccurate fatherhood, based on genetics and across species, run as high as 10%. From the species perspective, it may be even a survival trait.
Your Matthew quote is perfect. Two rules – love thy neighbor and love god. Say goodbye to the 10 commandments. And frankly, I think Matthew took license with Jesus’ original authorship (of his life). Better when Jesus said “I am the way”. It’s that whole lead-by-example thing.
Jake
Jake,
I agree that stoning is barbaric. I’ve lived in Saudi Arabia. I’ve seen the public executions, amputations, floggings etc. I imagine that it isn’t much different than the punishments in Puritan New England or the hangings of the wild-west (USA). Such things are a public spectacle meant to discourage crimes and to administer “justice” according to the society’s values.
(My late, first husband, worked for ARAMCO 40+ years ago; when Dharan was just a little village..with an open sewer down the middle of the street. We also lived in Indonesia, Malaysia, Venezuela and other countries.)
Please note: Executions, amputations and floggings are still common (and legal) in Saudi Arabia and many other countries. Sharia law, which is part and parcel of Islam demands such punishments! (If you don’t believe me check out the BBC’s search for articles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
“unlicensed sex is not an excuse…” This is a view from a person who lives in an enlightened, “classically liberal,” society with Christian foundations that is trending towards secularism and multiculturalism!
The same views do not hold true in most of the rest of the world; especially in Muslim countries. Islam does not tolerate “sexual freedom” or “women’s/female rights.” Most cultures don’t allow women or children the same prerogatives are are allowed for men. I am not condoning such view. I am only stating a fact.
“Survival trait” and ” +/- 10%…” These statsistics and their interpretation are irrelevant when a society’s values are being discussed; even if the reality differs from the ideal of a society’s values. Laws are a tangible, public reflection of a society’s ideal values.
Even in this culture, allowances are made (regarding sentencing) if a man/woman catches their spouse/beloved in the arms of another…and kills one or both of the offending parties on the spot. It’s called a “crime of passion.”
Jesus was right to tell the crowd that “he who is without sin to cast the first stone” at the adulteress. He exhibited MERCY which is the hallmark of the Judeo-Christian God.
Jesus told the adulteress to “SIN NO MORE”…That’s the key. Jesus didn’t abolish or ignore the law. He judged the woman mercifully!
Mankind can administer “justice” (according to the laws/values of their particular society) in the administrating of justice they can be merciful, in the imitation of Christ (or other spiritual leaders). Only Our Lord and Savior is mercy itself.
~~EP
P.S.
A “crime of passion” is not the same as an “honor killing.” An honor killing is a premeditated murder by family members (usually male) to “avenge” the “dishonor” brought upon the family/tribe/clan by a female member. The dishonor can be an innocent as looking at a man, communicating online, or allowing one’s veil/scarf to fall off; or it can entail adultery or the refusal to marry a man in a prearranged marriage (of which the woman/girl had no say in the matter).~~EP
EP, the point is not that a society’s “values” are crossed, it is that those values are inevitably in favor of whoever is in control – typically the patriarchy. Women are EQUAL. Not second class.
Sharia may demand punishments, but I think that Islam is not so bent on punishing people. Read the old testament – lots of punishing there.
Sharia is power – in the hands of the unscrupulous. Religion is often a source of power, not a source of healing.
Back to Matthew – 2 rules. Love thy neighbor, love God. Everything else is beside the point.
Jake
Jake,
You either didn’t read or you didn’t understood my post.(10 May 2009 @1:49pm)
You are mistaken regarding Sharia law. Islam is a total system of law, religion and politics. Islam can not be separated from Sharia law or Sharia law from Islam (BTW “Islam” means “submission”)
The above is why Islam is incompatible with Western concepts such as “Natural law,” equality for those who embrace other religions (or those who are female) and the separation of church and state. In fact, the separation of church and state is anathema to Islam.
Jesus said: ““Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” in three passages of the bible.(NIV translation, Matt 22:21; Mark 12:17 and Luke 20:25)
Jesus obviously believed that God and the state were not one inseparable unit. Therein lies one of the many differences between Christianity and Islam.
You’re right that Matthew 22:37-40 is a good passage to live by.
PS “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” ~~
Matt 5:14Matt 5:17 (sorry about that–my bad)And Christianity is not? Despite clear admonitions (one of which you reference) in the Gospels, both in historical and modern times Christianity has directly act to shape the laws of the land. One need only think of gay marriage, birth control, In God We Trust on our currency, “One Nation Under God” in the pledge of allegiance and opposition to stem cell research to see that the modern Christian is intent upon acting in the political sphere to enact religious dogma as law.
Sharia is an invention of man, and yes, it is closely tied to Islam. The Christian Church has no leg to stand on in it’s criticism of Sharia. Were it not for the Enlightenment, which largely bypassed Islam, there would be little to choose between Christian Law and Sharia.
So you can thank liberal European intellectuals for what little room Christianity has to criticize Islam.
Jake
Jake,
True, in the West there is a balance between the Church and the precepts of the Enlightenment. However, Christianity, thanks to Augustine, has embraced the western concepts of the scientific method and classical (Greek) philosophy such as “Natural law.” In Europe, the balance has shifted towards Secularism. For better or worse, Europe is about to receive a very rude awakening from hordes of unassimilated citizens. These people are repulsed by the very idea of equality and liberty…let alone fraternity!
If you think that Christianity has it out for gays; wait until you see what Islam offers. I know what I’m talking about, I have lived in both Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. “Lack of compassion” doesn’t begin to describe it!
From reading your posts; I get the impression that the “Christian God” (or for that matter “god”) is some sort of “meanie” who stomps around shaking his finger at folks and saying “No, no, no.” I see my faith as a framework for building a happy life on earth and (hopefully) in heaven.
I’m of the opinion that total freedom from all tradition, religion and the limits of Natural law is; as Janis Joplin succinctly said: “[Freedom is]..just another word for nothing left to lose…”. Freedom without the anchors of faith and family and a code of law (such as our Constitution) is just anarchy or chaos. The French and Russian revolutions were proof of that!
I prefer the separation of church and state because I don’t like the idea of an established state religion. However, I don’t believe that the separation of church and state is a license to promote “freedom from religion.” The Founders were deists who embraced the Enlightenment as well as their own faith. Their writings are peppered with remarks concerning the deity and “Providence.”
Some of the founders were Deists, EP, but not all of them, and some of the most influential were not. I believe freedom from religion is the principle embodied in the Constitution. I support the concept wholeheartedly.
And no, I don’t think of God as a meanie. I don’t think much of God at all.
And saying that Islam REALLY has it in for gays, while true, is not an excuse for Christianity’s shortcomings.
EP, you confuse freedom of choice with absence of attachment. Failure of attachment is a serious mental disorder, leading to all kinds of problems in life. I suggest the choice and attachment are not mutually exclusive. In fact, for those who truly embrace freedom of choic in their each and every act, attachment, love for their fellow beings both near and far, is a conscious act that has much greater significance than the unthinking acceptance of, say, “blood” relations.
Because, EP, we are ALL blood relations. Some of us just refuse to recognize that fact.
Jake
Jake,
We certainly view the world from different perspectives!
Fair enough, the above are not the best examples or statements on my part to illustrate my point.
Christianity doesn’t have shortcomings; people have shortcomings. One of the hallmarks of Christianity is tolerance for those who differ. That doesn’t mean that a Christian ignores what their see as “error” “sin,” or “uninformed of the issue.”
The Spiritual Works of Mercy encourage us to “Admonish sinners,” “Instruct the uninformed” and to “Be patient with those in error” with love, of course.
I don’t believe that I confuse “Freedom of Choice” with “absence of attachment.” (perhaps the Joplin quote was not the best choice)
Choices have consequences. Desiring a framework of values to measure one’s choices and their consequences has everything to do with accepting one’s limitations as a created being.
Lacking a framework, such as most religions (or law codes) provide, leaves a person without a standard to gauge the responsibility of those choices and the consequences of any particular choice.
We are all created beings; created in the image and likeness of God.(My personal belief..my “choice” if you will).
Correct me if I’m wrong; but I believe that the phrase: “We (mankind) are created in the image and likeness of God;” (which I’ve stated in prior posts at this site) says the same thing as your quote (above).
Why, EP, I do believe we agree. However we got there, we both see each other as sibs. I am so not amazed – good people are everywhere.
What framework other than the quote from Matthew is required? Everything else is supercargo; completely redundant.
Call it what you will, love thy neighbor, the golden rule, whatever – for most of us that is the framework we require.
Jake
John,
Your illustrative description of the ten commandments is noted. Yes, the Beatitudes, “perfect” the Law.
Likewise, the “seven deadly sins’ (aka “Cardinal sins”) are examples of traits not to acquire. And, the “seven virtues” (4 Cardinal, 3 Theological) are traits to cultivate within one’s life.
Additionally, the “seven corporal works of mercy” and the “seven spiritual works of mercy” serve as examples of the seven virtues in action. They are; (sort of) of a yardstick, to gauge our progression in our walk with Christ. As we attempt to be charitable; that is exhibit Agape Love, towards others.
Why? Because God is love, mercy and justice combined as the eternal, glorious, totally omniscient, all-powerful force of life itself!
[...] ISLAND, IL Last week in “Gnosticism and the Accumulation of Scheiss” I suggested (to the cheers of those who agreed and—odd how this works—the jeers of those who [...]
A quick work on the Jake-EP exchange. This is a deep discussion, well worth having, but it addresses premises without which a discussion of Gnosticism makes absolutely no sense. It’s akin to someone who despises football, or somehow believes it does not exist, or finds it pretty much the same as cricket, arguing over the BCS system.
Sorry, I meant quick “word” not “work”.
I believe the disease goes deeper than this analysis might suggest. It is not merely that, through seeking to eliminate discomfort and exertion, we, in our gnosticism, are inclined (in a seeming paradox) toward materialistic behavior. Walker Percy explores, in Lost in the Cosmos and elsewhere, how man seeks not only physical comfort, but–vainly–spiritual comfort, through acquisition. An illuminating passage from pp. 20-22: .
The tendency to press things to yield for us more (or other) than they were meant to yield, deepens our alienation from self and the entire physical realm. If I perceive the physical world around me merely as an instrument for my personal redemption or even just my pleasure, I will, sooner or later, be profoundly disappointed. This, in turn, may lead me to reject the physical world (or deny its capacity for redemption) for failing to serve my purposes. I may thereafter pursue the futile task of eradicating my emptiness through the esoteric and/or assign no value or eternal consequence to the use or abuse of the physical order.
The impact of the decidedly post-metaphysical inclinations of our intelligentsia is not to be underestimated. (Though it may be symptomatic than causal.) The ink on the divorce papers (death certificate?) between the ideal and the real has been dry for some time in the academy.
Please disregard the coding of the last entry. The Walker Percy passage is not what follows the colon (that was my blathering), but can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/lostinthecosmos
Another person who saw this coming was C. S. Lewis, in “That Hideous Strength”, the third of his sci-fi trilogy. I can’t remember if he used the term Gnostic explicitly, but one of the characters in the book was trying to design a machine that could keep a human brain alive to the extent that we could have as little flesh as possible and still be ourselves. The entire trilogy is a great read.
[...] Gnosticism and the Accumulation of Scheiss Our Gnostic Assault on Ourselves [...]
I wonder whether this prevailing gnosticism is what has led to our society’s fascination with athletes– people who use their bodies in almost transcendent ways, embodying grace and power and vigor, etc. (see David Foster Wallace’s essay on Tracy Austin). Of course athletes have always been revered, but never idolized, I suspect, in the way they are today. Is it that they remind us that man is more than mind? Might Kobe Bryant’s jumpshot constitute our last public (as it were) sacrament, pointing us to the divine by means of the physical?
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