The falsity of communal reassurance based on nothing

Love vs. aura of benevolence

To be "thought of" kindly by many and to "think of" them kindly is only a diluted benevolence, a collective illusion of friendship. Its function is not the sharing of love but complicity in a mutual reassurance that is based on nothing. Instead of cultivating this diffuse aura of benevolence, you should enter with trepidation into the deep and genuine concern for those few persons God has committed to your care.

Selah.

Thomas Merton

The crowded worship at the Church of Green

America's mea maxima culpa

Jonah Goldberg has penned a thoughtful piece called "Church of Green: America's Mea Maxima Culpa." In it, he confronts the rampant mysticism in the environmentalist movement here in America. He prophetically details environmentalism as a kind of religion. Or, to quote Glenn Reynolds, "A substitute therefor without the troubling discerning-God's-will-and-following-it part."

Jonah's words are worth hearing:

I admit it: I’m no environmentalist. But I like to think I’m something of a conservationist. No doubt for millions of Americans this is a distinction without a difference, as the two words are usually used interchangeably. But they’re different things, and the country would be better off if we sharpened the distinctions between both word and concept.

At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. “If you look carefully,” author Michael Crichton observed, “you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.”

Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt, and moral bullying. Its worldview casts man as a sinful creature who, through the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, abandoned our Edenic past. John Muir, who laid the philosophical foundations of modern environmentalism, described humans as “selfish, conceited creatures.” Salvation comes from shedding our sins, rejecting our addictions (to oil, consumerism, etc.) and demonstrating an all-encompassing love of Mother Earth. Quoth Al Gore: “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

...

Environmentalists insist that their movement is a secular one. But using the word “secular” no more makes you secular than using the word “Christian” automatically means you behave like a Christian. Pioneering green lawyer Joseph Sax describes environmentalists as “secular prophets, preaching a message of secular salvation.” Gore, too, has been dubbed a “prophet.” A green-themed California hotel provides Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” next to the Bible and a Buddhist tome.

Whether or not it’s adopted the trappings of religion, my biggest beef with environmentalism is how comfortably irrational it is. It touts ritual over reality, symbolism over substance, while claiming to be so much more rational and scientific than those silly sky-God worshipers and deranged oil addicts.

It often seems that displaying faith in the green cause is more important than advancing the green cause. The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving — their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years. Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear, according to Danish social scientist Bjørn Lomborg, author of the book Cool It!

Yet 300 to 500 polar bears could be saved every year, Lomborg says, if there were a ban on hunting them. What’s cheaper — trillions to trim carbon emissions, or a push for a ban on polar bear hunting?

Plastic grocery bags are being banned, even though they require less energy to make and recycle than paper ones. The country is being forced to subscribe to a modern version of transubstantiation, whereby corn is miraculously transformed into sinless energy even as it does worse damage than oil.

Conservation, which shares roots and meaning with conservatism, stands athwart this mass hysteria. Yes, conservationism can have a religious element as well, but that stems from the biblical injunction to be a good steward of the Earth, rather than a worshiper of it. But stewardship involves economics, not mysticism...

Thoughtful words. Read it all, here.

This is a reflection of easy morality. Such doctrine allows the follower a guilt-assuaging code where he or she feels a sense of moral well-being because s/he is obeying the culturally inculcated mores regarding green doctrine; and yet, at the same time the tenor of the life is in rebellion against divine Law. In buying off their inner moral compass with replacement morality, they are deadened to actual moral relation to God. Relation to earth has replaced relation to Creator of earth; they can live as practical enemies of God [the person] because they now relate to a cultural concept of god -- a force, a spirit, an idea, but certainly not a Holy Person, pre-existent Creator.

It is part of a long war of rejection of the transcendent, holy Deity in favor of an immanent, manageable one -- one easily structured to our earthly and sexual desires. It's no accident that the ancient goddess worship that God judged so vehemently [in fact, He commanded that no prayers should be prayed for those involved in such destructive behavior, cf. Jer. 7:15] linked the sacraments of earth and sex: the ones who worshiped thus were just doing their duty for the environment! And it felt so good. So moral and intuitive and pleasurable!

So easily manipulated to fallen human desires: the Church of Green has been in operation for a long time. And it always ends offering its children to Molech in the name of earth-good.

I believe in conservation but I cannot believe in environmentalism, because I believe in God.

Selah.

Thoughts on rejection of light

That which cannot be forgiven

by George MacDonald

“All manner of sin and blasphemy,” the Lord said, “shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”

God speaks, as it were, in this manner: “I forgive you everything,” he says. “Not a word more shall be said about your sins – only come out of them. Come out of the darkness of your exile. Come into the light of your home, of your birthright, and do evil no more. Lie no more, cheat no more, oppress no more, slander no more, envy no more, be neither greedy nor vain. Love your neighbor as I love you. Be my good child. Trust in your father. I am light – come to me and you shall see things as I see them, and hate the evil thing. I will make you love the thing which you now call good and love not. I forgive all the past.

“I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me,” some say, “but I prefer staying in the darkness. Forgive me that too.”

“No,” replies God, “that I cannot do. That is the one thing that cannot be forgiven – the sin of choosing to be evil and refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that sin. It would be to take part in it. To side with wrong against right, with murder against life, cannot be forgiven. The thing that is past I pass. But he who goes on doing the same, annihilates my forgiveness. He makes it of no effect. Let a man have committed any sin whatever, I forgive him. But to choose to go on sinning – how can I forgive that? it would be to nourish and cherish evil. It would be to let my creation go to ruin.

“Shall I keep you alive to do things hateful in the sight of all true men?” If a man refuse to come out of his sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a love that would be no love if it left him there. Shall I allow my creature to be the thing my soul hates?”

Selah.

George MacDonald, “Light,” The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, edited by Michael Phillips (Bethany House: Minneapolis, MN), 127-28.

A kingdom of kings and priests

Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king! To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth: every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. — John 18:37

Kingship

George MacDonald

Yet the Lord says he came into the world to be king!

What then is the kingdom over which the Lord cares to reign? I answer: A kingdom of kings, and no other. A kingdom where every man is a king, there and there only does the Lord care to reign, in the name of his Father.

As no king in Europe would care to reign over a cannibal, a savage, or an animal race, so the Lord cares for no kingdom over anything this world calls a nation. A king must rule over his own kind. Jesus is a king in virtue of no conquest, inheritance, or election, but in right of essential being. And he cares for no subjects but such as are his subjects in the same right. His subjects must be of his own kind, in their very nature and essence kings.

To understand his answer to Pilate, we must see what his kingship consists of – we must see what it is that makes him a king, what manifestation of his essential being gives him a claim to be king.

It is this: The Lord’s is a kingdom in which no man seeks to be above another. Ambition is of the dirt of this world’s kingdoms. He says, “I am a king, for I was born for the purpose, I came into the world with the object of bearing witness to the truth. Everyone that is of my kind, that is of the truth, hears my voice. He is a king like me, and is one of my subjects.”

Thereupon — as would most Christians nowadays, instead of setting about being true — Pilate requests a definition of truth, a presentation to his intellect in set terms of what the word truth means.

Yet instantly, whether knowing his inquiry was useless, or intending to resume it after he had se the Lord free, he goes out to the people to tell them he finds no fault in him. Whatever interpretation we put on his action here, he must be far less to blame than those ‘Christians’ who, instead of setting themselves to be pure ‘even as he is pure,’ to be their brother and sister’s keeper, and to serve God by being honorable in shop and bank and office and market, proceed to ‘serve’ him by going to church, by condemning the opinions of their neighbors, and by teaching others what they do not themselves heed.

Neither Pilate nor they ask the one true question, ‘How am I to be a true man? How am I to become a man worth being a man?’

The Lord is a king because his life — the life of his thoughts, of his imagination, of his will, of every smallest action — is true. He is true first to God the Father in that he is altogether His. Then he is true to himself in that he forgets himself altogether. Finally, he is true to his fellows in that he will endure anything they do to him, and not cease declaring himself the son and messenger and likeness of God. They will kill him, but it matters not — the truth is as He says!

Selah.

George MacDonald, "Kingship," Unspoken Sermons: Series Three.

The reality of Easter

God consuming our consequences

A quote that goes to the heart of Easter meaning:

"Fulfillment is found in Christ. In Him are contained all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The point is that the salvation He offers doesn’t come through signs and wonders, though they may be appended to it, but from a turning to Him in the acknowledgment of His preeminence and lordship, and as the medium through which total release can be known… Jesus doesn’t simply show us the way, or the truth. He is the way, the truth. He’s not another guru, or preceptor, or avatar, or holy man, or prophet. He’s God stepped down in human flesh to die, consuming within Himself the consequences of our decision to turn away from God, thus breaking the momentum of our eternal entrapment. In this way we are reconciled to God and enjoy free and open access to Him. The Christian revelation is the end of the game.”

A quote from Michael Graham, who spent 28 years in search of truth, immersing himself in the best of Eastern mysticism, a personal student of Swami Muktananda Paramahansa [Siddha Yoga]. Michael's journey led him to a personal encounter with Christ, and a 180 degree turn from his former journey. It is a compelling story. His account is worth reading: "The Experience of Ultimate Truth."

Indeed. He is right: Jesus Christ is the One who consumes within himself the consequences of our decision to turn from God, thus breaking the momentum of our eternal entrapment. Jesus is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, whose pain has brought us peace -- bearing in himself our wounds, that we might be healed.

And Easter is the sign of that cosmic victory...

Happy Easter, all!

Postmodern eloquence

The use of language to obscure meaning

Ron Coleman on defining eloquence:

It is rather ironic how the definition of eloquence has devolved. It once meant a talent for powerfully, persuasively and elegantly communicating ideas. Now it is used to describe the use of pretty language to obscure meaning.

There are other words for that.

True. But the discussion needs to go a step further: The reason why the definition of eloquence has changed is that the definition of truth has changed. Most postmoderns [specifically, leftists] no longer believe that words reflect ultimate reality; therefore there is no contradiction when words only serve self-interest; scilicet, a speech is primarily judged by its presentation and not its inner meaning or metaphysics.

If you want to discover the real beliefs of BHO, don't look at his fine-sounding words; look at his actions. Look at his votes and non-votes, his long-term commitments, the staff and associates that he has chosen [before the glare of public attention surfaced]. Flee the rhetoric and look at the man, if you want to know the truth. A man is as he does. And such a look at BHO is very revealing...

p.s. I'll be posting more on the metaphysics of BHO, hopefully. Until then, look at the hard cold numbers: look at the votes, look at the hand-picked staff and relational commitments, look at his spiritual and political definitions [admittedly, a tough task, but the core is there... and it's not centrist, or even conciliatory, despite the smooth words].

A righteousness of God in humans

Neither doing nor knowing but Being

What is the righteousness which is of God by faith?

It is simply the thing that God wants every man to be, wrought out in him by constant obedient contact with God himself. It is not an attribute either of God or man, but a fact of character in God and in man. It is God’s righteousness wrought out in us, so that as He is righteous, we too are righteous.

It does not consist in obeying this or that law, not even the keeping of every law, so that no hairsbreadth did we run counter to one of them. To be righteous is to be such a heart, soul, mind, and will, as would recoil with horror from the lightest possible breach of any law of God. It is to be so in love with what is fair and right as to make it impossible for a person to do anything that is less than absolutely righteous. It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous, but such a love of fair play toward everyone with whom we come in contact, that anything less than fulfilling, with a clear joy, our divine relation to him or her, is impossible.

More powerful than all powers is being. To be is more powerful than even to do. Action may be hypocrisy, but being is the thing in itself and is the parent of action.

If by neglect of its wings an eagle should sink to become a sparrow, it would then recognize only the laws of sparrow life. For the sparrows of humanity do not generally believe in a consuming fire and an outer darkness, where all that will be left is an ever renewed “alas!” The “alas” is that they neglected their wings, neglected to try to see beyond their own horizons, neglected to do the words of Him who alone is life.

It is truth and not serenity that a man’s nature requires of him. It is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as the test. It is love, and no amount of flattery, that will prosper. Differences as wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to a hairsbreadth in that day. The customs of the trade and the picking of pockets will go together, with the greater excuse for the greater need and less knowledge. Liars the most gentlemanly and the most rowdy will go as liars just the same.

The first shall be last and the last first.

Selah.

George MacDonald, Discovering the Character of God, edited by Michael R. Phillips, 175-176.

Neither isolated truth nor orphaned deed

Love that takes shape

The Lord cared neither for isolated truth nor for orphaned deed. It was truth in the inward parts, it was the good heart, the mother of good deeds, He cherished. It was the live, active, knowing, breathing good He came to further.

He cared for no speculation in morals or religion. It was good men He cared about, not notions of good things, or even good actions, save as the outcome of life, save as the bodies in which the primary live actions of love and will in the soul took shape and came forth.

Could He by one word have set at rest all the questionings of philosophy as to the supreme good and the absolute truth, I venture to say that word He would not have uttered. But He would die to make men good and true. His whole heart would respond to the cry of sad publican or despairing pharisee, ‘How am I to be good?’

George MacDonald