Sin vs. Guilt

 

Let me rant.

I suspected trouble when the handout for the session said that Jesus’s crucifixion justified us, and “justified” meant “just as if I’d never sinned.”

Typical of the day; perhaps of the human condition. Everyone is looking for a “get out of jail free” card.

So I can sin all I want, because I’m a Christian? What is purgatory all about? Why does the priest assign a penance after confession?

This was clearly the common modern “happy happy joy joy” Christianity. Self-centred materialism cloaking itself in the mantle of Christianity. As seems to have taken over all the churches. 

To this form of “feel good” religion, the problem is not sin. No, it is feeling guilty. 

It follows that we must not condemn sin in another. That might damage their self-esteem.

Someone asked, “what if I still feel unresolved anger towards someone?” And the response was not spiritual advice; it was to see a therapist. 

Therapy exists as a replacement for religion. Therapy refuses to recognize sin or morality.

Defining “sin,” the group leader cited Iron Man and Captain America as his text. Iron Man was about satisfying his desires. Captain America was about duty. And the proper path was to reconcile the two, and achieve both.

So you sin if you do your duty, and forget your own desires. You do what is right so long as it is in accord with what you want to do.

The issue of sex outside of marriage inevitably came up. It was important, no doubt, to raise it in order to dispel any sense of false guilt. One participant noted that it was unselfish, as it harmed no one.

General assent.

Another participant chimed in that marriage existed to protect women, it was a civil contrast, really. And adultery was considered perfectly okay until Christianity stepped in.

The chilling thing is that neither of these assertions take the slightest thought for the welfare of children. By the nature of the sex act, they are liable to be involved. Modern man clearly has contempt for children.

Not that casual sex has no other victims. It reduces the partner to a means, not an end. The essence of immorality, as Kant pointed out.

It is also worth noting, as I did at the meeting, that adultery was punishable by death in many non-Christian societies.

The group leader explained that sin was simply “missing the mark,” like an arrow missing its target.

I have heard this as a Muslim concept of sin. But it is not the Christian concept. The Catholic concept of grave (mortal) sin requires a willful turning away from what we know we should do. We must be conscious of the gravity of the matter, fully in control  of our actions, and do it anyway.

CCC para 1857 “For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: ‘Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.’"

It is not missing the mark. It is firing in the opposite direction.

And it certainly beggars the conscience to maintain that Hitler or Mengele were perfectly decent, well-intentioned fellows, but just made an oopsie.

This is an effort to excuse sin.

Tied to this, the group leader of course stressed the need to forgive; representing this as Christ’s way. 

He, and the group, deliberately ignored Jesus’s requirement that the guilty party admit guilt. So that the imperative was, in fact, to endorse sin.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Jesus did not even accept an apology and admission of guilt, if he felt it was not sincere: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

The cruelty here is unspeakable: telling someone who has been grievously wronged that they are in the wrong for not forgiving, rather than commiserating with them. It traps them in a cycle of abuse. Picture someone punching you in the face repeatedly, each time demanding you forgive him, then punching you again.

It is perfect pharisaism. Every religion will be infested with pharisaism, a desperate attempt to invert its message, by evildoers.

Jesus Reveals the True Meaning of Faith

 

 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith."

The Lord replied, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

"Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here immediately and take your place at table'? Would he not rather say to him, 'Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished'? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?

So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'"

This was the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass.

Jesus’s initial statement is striking: if anyone has the slightest faith, they can order trees to uproot and grow on the surface of the ocean.

It would seem to follow that nobody has even the slightest faith. Because nobody can do that. Doesn’t that mean all is lost?

No, wait—I can do that. I can make a mulberry tree uproot itself and float upright on the ocean. I can do it in my imagination, in my mind’s eye. Anyone who has a decent imagination can do it. And we can draw it, too, or put it in a story.

So what Jesus is actually telling us is that faith = imagination. Or rather, faith is the willing suspension of disbelief, the ability to accept that the world of the imagination, and not the material world, is the real world. Our imagination is the kingdom of heaven, or our window into it.

But although the kingdom of heaven is in this sense within, we are also not in the kingdom of heaven now. We are living in a material world, where we must tend to our ploughs and our flocks, earning our daily upkeep by the sweat of our brow. This is what Jesus goes on to point out: we are servants spending most of our time just maintaining ourselves. And when we have free time—we ought to be taking the products of the fields, and using them to feed God. “You may eat and drink when I am finished.”

The kingdom of heaven is our reward, once we have done this—presumably, in the next life.

And this stands to reason. There must be some need for the material world; otherwise, why did God create it? Why not have us born into heaven?

The need is not simply to prove our worthiness for the world to come, although this might be reason enough. We are here to accomplish something God needs us to accomplish: to feed him.

That is, to take the produce of the fields, of the material world, and fashion something from it that will satisfy him.

Which seems to me to describe the process of creating art. In making art, we are co-creators with God; we are completing his plan for creation.

The Democrats Dance in their Hats

The sombrero memes furor makes me think the old saying needs to be amended: “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” It seems to work on the downslope as well: “First they win, then you become an object of fun, then they can safely ignore you.” We seem to be at the object of fun stage now at which the MAGA right has won the culture wars. Th pretensions of the left begin to look absurd.

Part of the power of the sombrero meme is that Hakim Jeffries, Chuck Shumer, and the elected left generally is always so grim and so angry. It is hard to picture them smiling, or many other prominent leftist politicians. In the case of Shumer, I visualize a smirk, which is not the same thing. That makes them especially mockable—their apparent sense of superiority and self-importance.

The measure of the meme’s effectiveness is the criticisms leveled by the left. I have heard it called “insane,” “filth,” “disgusting,” and, of course, “racist.”

Is the sombrero and the mariachi music racist? It is certainly stereotyped, but there is nothing offensive about the stereotype. Part of the delight of the meme is that it expresses liberation from the humourless leftist prohibition on ethnic jokes. Why wouldn’t a Mexican be proud of mariachi music and a distinctive ethnic hat?

I try to imagine the Irish equivalent; as that is my own primary ethnicity. An image of Trump, or RFK Jr., or Nicole Shanahan, with white clay pipes in their mouths and stepdancers throwing up gold pieces? Nope, I still think it is funny and somehow liberating.

The sombrero meme does play on the idea of Mexicans as “the other.” This could be worrying. But in this case, they genuinely are the other, and that is the whole point: extending taxpayer-funded health care to non-citizens. So it has to be fair comment.

And I like mariachi music.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Going through Ray Bradbury’s marvellous short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” with a student the other day, it came to me that it demonstrated how far appreciation for poetry has fallen in the culture. The story was first published in 1950, but imagined American life in 2026. A fully automated house; we’re not there yet. But Bradbury assumed that the automated house would be programmed to read a requested poem to each occupant each evening. And the integrated audio clock announced each hour with a little rhyme.

In 1950, this was popular culture. Poetry was as central as, say, pop music is now.

Bradbury’s prose is also notably poetic. Rather than automatically going for the shortest and most common word, as the modernist style commands, he pays close attention to cadence.

In Defense of Monarchy

 

All nations operate on shared delusions. I see this perhaps more clearly than most because I have lived in several different cultures.

One dangerous delusion Americans share is that there is something fundamentally wrong with monarchies. I heard it just recently from a panelist in a US news show: “no matter what the problems with our democracy, surely it is better than living under a dictatorship or a monarchy.”

Is it?

For that matter, are monarchies and democracies different systems? A democracy is not the same thing as a republic.

This prejudice has caused America much grief. When they left Iraq, for example, they could have saved many lives and much treasure by handing the keys over to a monarch and going home. Instead, they stayed and tried, absurdly, to impose a democratic republic. A contradiction in terms: to impose democracy.

A monarchy is a valuable asset to a stable democracy. Most of the world’s strongest democracies are monarchies: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium. There are reasons for this. Democracies require unity and trust: you have to know your political opponents will deal fairly with you out of power. A monarch is a useful point of unity; a shared loyalty and a referee for the transition of power. The monarch has more often than not been a backstop preserving democracy under threat. The flag never falls into the street to be seized by the strongest arm. Compare the great republics of France and the United States; compare republican Spain or Weimar to royalist Spain or Germany. The republics do seem more prone to dissolve into revolution or civil war, or be taken over by some dictator.

A monarch gives the nation a human face; a royal family makes the state feel more like one big family. Everybody is brother and sister. This is humanizing. This preserves civil peace. People naturally care about people, not pieces of paper. And more about people than ideology.

Without a royal family as the focus for a nation, the obvious alternative is ethnicity. This is bad news for any ethnic minorities. At best, they must feel left out, never at home. At worst, you have Nazi Germany.

If not ethnicity, you have a nation unified by ideology or religion. The United States managed this. So did the Soviet Union, or Maoist China. So did the several Muslim caliphates. But there are only so many ideologies or religions powerful enough to preserve consensus among a large group of people. And you necessarily risk limiting freedom of thought. The situation becomes difficult for minority religions.

Accordingly, monarchy is best at allowing diversity, and at preserving peace and equality in any diverse state.

It also introduces an element of glamour and magic to everyone’s lives. Monarchies are romantic. Lacking one, America has obviously compensated with their “stars” and “idols.” But this system seems terribly damaging to those caught up in it. Unlike monarchies, these celebrities are not groomed for the role, and their fame almost inevitably fades. The psychic strain must be incalculable. Many crash and burn.

A monarchy also seems to inoculate a nation against nepotism in politics. There is some instinctive craving, that in republics throws up political “dynasties,” like the Kennedys, Bushes, or Clintons in the US, the Gandhis in India, the LePens in France, the Marcoses and the Aquinos in the Philippines. Compare Britain. With a monarchy, this seems much less common. The need is met, and does not interfere with meritocracy in government.

For democracy to function requires a high-trust society, with established traditions of gentlemanly debate. If a society has not developed the necessary traditions, monarchy is again the best alternative, and the one most likely to peacefully and naturally segue into democracy when conditions allow. Either a dictator or a democratically elected leader is there because of a burning interest in acquiring power over others. This is just the sort of personality we do not want in charge. A monarchy will throw into power random personalities. The average person is not very interested, if at all, in power over others. A dictator, or even an elected leader facing defeat, has every incentive to loot the treasury before he leaves, is ousted, or dies. But a monarchy passes on to the son; it is natural instinct to preserve the inheritance for the next generation.

All systems are imperfect, as families are imperfect, but monarchy has natural safeguards.

Compare the various monarchies in the Middle East, where there is no democracy, to the republics; notice who is doing well, not persecuting minorities, and who weathered the “Arab Spring” without chaos or civil war. Compare Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco; with Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza. See the difference?

Surely the monarchic system proves its worth. It is time-tested, and our ancestors were not fools.

Dives and Lazarus and the Resurrection

 

Jesus said to the Pharisees: 

“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. 

When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’ 

Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’ 

He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’ 

But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ 

He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 

Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'”

Luke 16:19-31.

This passage, the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass, is rich with significance. Because Lazarus is named, it does not appear to be a parable. From it we understand that either hell or heaven are eternal fates: one cannot move between them. 

It strongly suggests that suffering in this life will be rewarded in heaven. Nothing here indicates that Lazarus led a particularly moral life, full of good deeds. No, he is given heaven as a reward expressly in recompense for his suffering. “Now he is comforted here.”

This speaks against the self-satisfied “happy happy joy joy” form of Christianity that I so dislike. To be contented in a world of want is an indictment.

It also seems to me to endorse Judaism. Jesus was not sent for the Jews. There is no need for Jews to convert. So long as they listen to Moses and the prophets, they are good. If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, Jesus’s coming will make no difference to them.

This also affirms my own dislike of the argument that the resurrection is proof of the Christian faith. The passage itself says it is not sufficient proof, and not necessary proof. One believes in Christianity because one listens to the words of Jesus, or listens to the words of Moses and the prophets, and knows one is hearing the voice of God. One knows in one’s heart. And of course one knows, because God created us to hear and respond to his word. “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.”

This also seems  to be the point of the tale of doubting Thomas: “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

Whose Free Speech?

So famous he still needs a name tag?

Many on the left have said that ABC suspending Jimmy Kimmel was or would be a violation of his freedom of speech.

I think we need to make some distinctions. If you say ABC cannot cancel Kimmel no matter what he says, you are ignoring ABC’s free speech rights. That would be compelled speech. ABC is a publisher; it has a right to publish whom they choose, because Kimmel represents them to the public. Imagine if a corporation hired an advertising firm, and then was legally required to run their ads no matter what they sent in.

The issue is different for online platforms like YouTube or Facebook or X. They are considered to merely be providing a service, like the phone company or an ISP. This gives them special legal protections. They are the “public square.” Nobody simply speaking on YouTube represents YouTube. So if they silence anyone, they are indeed violating their freedom of speech.

And the issue is different for “blacklisting”—that is, cancelling or silencing someone not for what they are saying, but for something they said at some other time or on some other platform. That does seem a violation of freedom of speech. It has a chilling effect on public discourse.

If government steps in and requires ABC to cancel Kimmel, openly or behind the scenes, on pain of retribution, this is a violation of freedom of speech—of ABC’s freedom of speech as well as Kimmel’s.

But even the government has the right to block slanderous speech, libel, incitement to violence, or pornography. Slander, libel, or incitement to violence are not just speech, but also deed; they are performative, and can materially harm others. Pornography is not necessarily performative, but may be socially undesirable. Similarly, the government has the right to arrest someone for walking about naked or masturbating in front of children. And no inalienable rights are violated in censoring it. Freedom of speech protects opinions, information and artistic expression, for the sake of public discourse and conscience, and not personal fetishes. 

I hope this clarifies matters. 

Should Kimmel be fired? I urge ABC to do so.

On Being Spiritually Bullied

Friend Xerxes, the formerly left-wing columnist, who has now mostly eschewed politics, wrote recently objecting to the evangelical Protestant “born-again” concept of sudden conversion. He considers this “bullying,” and says it is not in the Bible.

Pressed on how this is bullying, he emphasizes the demand to repent past sins. That is the bullying; and that is what is not in the Bible.

As a Catholic, I really have no dog in this fight. Instant conversions are not the expected norm in Catholicism. Catholicism is dubious about recognizing sudden conversions, because they may not be sincere. The usual advice is to sit on it for six months to a year, and spend that time walking the walk and studying the faith, before going public. 

But surely there is much Biblical warrant and saintly testimony for sudden conversion. Even outside Christianity: consider the case of the Buddha. Or the legend of Newton under the apple tree. Or Archimedes’s famous “Eureka!” Everyone has had such experiences in minor matters.

And the Bible gives several examples, aside from the famous one of Saul on the road to Damascus.

See Matthew 4:

“18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.

21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”

“At once.” “Immediately.” James and John even left their father Zebedee sitting in the boat. The gospel seems to actually be emphasizing how sudden this conversion was. And this, the calling of the first apostles, is presumably the intended template for Christian conversion.

See again Luke 19:8:

“But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, ‘Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’”

Again the suddenness seems to be significant. The tax collector converts “here and now.”

See too the mass conversion at Pentecost, very much like a modern revival meeting. Acts 2:38-41.

“Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”

Saul’s conversion is most obvious because it represents a 180 degree turn. But compare the conversion of the good thief; or the centurions who, after crucifying Jesus, conclude, “this surely was the son of God.”

Consider too St. Augustine’s account of his conversion, after hearing a child’s voice say “take and read.” 

“For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.”

So too with Old Testament prophets: most famously, Moses surprised by the burning bush on Sinai.

Xerxes objects that these conversions do not involve the element of repentance. So they are not bullying, and the born-agains are still bullies.

He is right that Simon, Andrew, James and John were not asked to repent their sins when they were called to follow Jesus. 

Does this mean that the modern Protestant model is flawed? That repentance is not necessary?

Surely Zaccheus was called to repent—or at least he did repent, instantly, and make reparations. For him, conversion and repentance seems to have been the same act. As, surely, it was in the case of Saul/Paul. After his vision, Paul refused food and drink for three days—surely an act of penance. And the Roman centurions must have repented of crucifying the son of God—kind of goes without saying. In the case of the Good Thief, his admission of guilt is explicit: “And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”

Augustine also repents, before conversion: “I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken.”

The need for repentance does seem to be clearly present in the New Testament taken as a whole. This is the commission of John the Baptist. “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

And people from the whole region responded. “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

Quite plausibly, Simon, Andrew, James and John were among those who had gone to the Jordan to be baptized. That would mean they had already repented of their sins. As a matter of fact, the Gospel of John cites Andrew and John as disciples of the Baptist. So that seems to explain it.

So it certainly seems Biblical that true conversion requires the admission of sins—that one is a sinner.

So where is Xerxes’s bullying?

Religion, in the sense of belief or faith, by its nature simply cannot be imposed on another. It cannot be compelled. So bullying is not possible.

Religion in the sense of certain rules of conduct, like fasting or public prayer or going to church, can be imposed by government or family: but in Canada or the US, religions are always voluntary associations.

Now consider this from the point of view of the missionary. If he or she is indeed a Christian believer, he is not bullying in calling on you to repent and give your life to Jesus. He is offering you eternal salvation and saving you from eternal damnation. To paint him as a bully, you must not just deny the truth of Christianity, but deny that anyone could believe it. It is like accusing the nurse of bullying for bringing a dying patient food and adjusting her pillow instead of leaving her to die alone—only infinitely worse. It is like blaming a fireman for rescuing someone from a burning building.

This example touches me personally. I had a great-uncle who converted and received extreme unction on his deathbed. The thought of it gives me great solace. It is never too late for salvation, this side of the grave.

Xerxes objects that there are religious cults, and they at least do bully: “They smother potential members with pseudo love and care. They never left the newbie alone. Until their victim succumbed – and felt huge relief that it was over.”

There was a great deal of concern about this back in the Seventies and Eighties. Hare Krishna, People’s Temple, Scientology, Heaven’s Gate, the Moonies, the Children of God, and the like. Parents hired “deprogrammers” to recover their children from such groups.

But such groups cannot kidnap anyone; they cannot hold anyone anywhere against their will. If someone wanted to leave, and were prevented, all they needed to do was approach the nearest cop. Or contact their family. They were necessarily there of their own free will. Who has the right to overrule their own judgement and freedom of religion and conscience?

I have known several ex-Moonies, one ex-Scientologist, and one ex-Children of God. They had migrated to other faiths, and had no reason to defend their former denomination. But they insisted this claim of brainwashing or constraint was bosh. They had never felt any kind of compulsion. And nobody tried to prevent them from leaving.

The objection to young people joining “cults” echoes the common experience of Catholic saints. St. Thomas of Aquinas’s family kidnapped him and confined him to prevent him entering the monastery. St. Francis of Assisi was kidnapped, confined, and tortured by his father when he sought to become a mendicant friar: his father “laid hands on him very shamelessly and disgracefully, and carried him off to his own house. And so, without any mercy, he shut him up for several days in a dark place, and thinking to bend his son’s spirit to his own will, urged him at first by words, and then by stripes and chains.”

The two groups that can get away with holding people against their will are the government, and the family. To most who entered the supposed “cults” of the seventies and eighties, I suspect this was their escape from bullying at home. An escape that has been shut down, by the persecution of the “cults” and their leaders. The bullies are now more firmly in control.

It is of course entirely possible, and likely, that some cults are sinister. Al Qaeda is a cult. People’s Temple was a cult. The Manson family was a cult. At the same time, these cults were not really religious. They were primarily political in their aims and interests, and this is how they claimed the right to bully and control.

As to bullying someone by asking them to admit that they are a sinner, it stands to reason that any Christian conversion must involve repentance. Nor is it unreasonable to point this out to one who wants to convert. Jesus says “call no one good but your Father who is in heaven.” The acknowledgement of God involves the acknowledgement that we are not ourselves God, that we are imperfect by comparison. We are all sinners.

Someone who will claim they have never sinned, is clearly not telling the truth, and is not prepared to stand before God, who sees all things.

In sum, there is nothing wrong or unreasonable or unbiblical with the evangelical Protestant concept of sudden conversion. And it is certainly not a form of “bullying.”