Why Mainstream Protestantism Lists Left

Some notorious sinner who ignored the ethical concerns of his community.

 

Friend Xerxes is arguing that our sense of morality comes from the community.

This is the claim of “cultural relativism.” It is obviously false. If a given community decided murder was perfectly okay, would it be okay? Killing Jews was perfectly acceptable in Nazi Germany; do we have no right to object to the practice? Or to slavery, since it was socially condoned in most parts of the world until rather recently? To child sacrifice? 

Challenged on the point, Xerxes seemed confused. So where then did I suppose morality comes from? Where else could it come from

From the natural law. We are all born with a conscience, an innate sense of right and wrong. Kant showed that the moral law is the one thing we cannot possibly dispute, a “categorical imperative.” It can be summed up in the simple phrase, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Nobody truly believes that murder is right, or lying is right.

Since this is self-evident, why do people like Xerxes fail to see it?

Often, I’m sure, due to guilt. Many find it easier to deny the reality of right and wrong than to admit doing wrong.

But this may also be a mainstream Protestant problem, at least in Xerxes’s case. Denominations like the United Church of Canada, or the Anglican Church, really have no fixed doctrines; you pretty much believe what you want, and worship what you want. Anglicans have their rituals, but since they do not believe in transubstantiation, they amount to little more than aesthetics. So why do you go to church?

Perhaps all that is left is latitudinarianism: you go to learn how to behave better.

Hence they must cling to the doctrine that morality comes from the community you keep. It becomes their raison d’etre.

And we can perhaps go a step further. Since the basics of morality are self-evident, they have to come up with something new. They cannot simply preach “Do not lie.” 

This may explain why these churches seem to veer into weird wokery and left-wing politics. What we sometimes call “virtue-signalling” or “political correctness.” They must have some mock morality that is not self-evident. 

It cannot be anything that requires self-sacrifice, or great effort: not fasting, say or climbing mountains on your knees. Mainstream Protestant congregations are democracies, and even strive for consensus. Such strenuous requirements are sure to cause some backlash.

So it becomes a matter of using the correct language, voting the correct way, condemning the right things in others.

The Stigma of Mental Illness

 

Friend Xerxes has written a recent column arguing that

1. There should be no stigma around mental illness.

2. People who are mentally ill should get professional help.

However, on the way he raises something else, which I think is more important. He argues that mental illness is really sin. Which explains the traditional stigma. But there should be no stigma around sin either. Sin is just a matter of “being different.”

“A medical issue,” he writes, “is probably better than lynching people for being different.”

This is a radical and a philosophically untenable position; ask Kant. Right and wrong are not arbitrary or random categories.

We should not condemn someone for rape or murder? They are just being different? 

How about, say, Hitler? 

And if there is no right or wrong, how then can you condemn anyone in turn for condemning anyone? They too are just being different. You have no basis to judge any action, to act or not act.

So is mental illness sin? Does this explain the stigma traditionally attached to it? 

The argument is plausible. 

A “mental illness” is self-evidently or definitionally spiritual—the mind is the spirit. This means, to begin with, that to refer them to medical science or a physician is obviously wrong. Spiritual illnesses are the preserve of the priest. And indeed, psychiatry and psychology say they cannot cure these things.

There are two forms of spiritual illness. Firstly, sin, a wilful turning away from truth and good, and secondly, being “dispirited,” a loss of meaning or understanding of what is true and good.

Most of what we call mental illness is the latter, a loss of meaning: a disorientation, a lack of confidence in what is and is not real or of value. 

There is nothing shameful about that. So why is shame attached to it?

The shame and guilt that is being concealed by pretending there is no sin and that it is a medical issue is in this case the guilt of the family, those around him or her, not the sufferer. It is pretty well established and understood that such “mental illness” is caused by childhood abuse and neglect. So sin is involved, but the “sufferer” from “mental illness” is the victim of the sin, not the perpetrator. It is in this sense that the Bible say that “the sins of the father are visited on the son, unto the third or fourth generation.” It is this that is implied by the concept of original sin.

This being so, the worst possible treatment for “mental illness” is the one currently always prescribed: to leave treatment to some family “caregiver.” This is to condemn the victim to a lifetime of torture. All to conceal the corporate guilt. They are, in effect, designated scapegoats.

This truth is complicated because other things we class as “mental illness” are indeed sins—or more properly, vices. These are the psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists, the “Type B personality disorders.” These are the guys who shoot up schools and drive cars into crowds. 

It’s all pretty straightforward, and solvable, “treatable,” once you accept the reality of sin. Lamentably, as Xerxes says, only “white American evangelicals” any more believe in sin. Properly speaking, Catholics do to, as does the Lord’s Prayer. But the torrent of the world has caused this to be suppressed even within Catholicism. I balked at the curriculum and pulled out of teaching Catechism class for the local diocese because the curriculum prohibited any mention of sin. “The message has to be only that God loves you.” Nor will you hear any mention of sin from the pulpit; for all that they still have the sacrament of confession, more recently renamed “reconciliation.” The core message at a recent “Life in the Spirit” seminar was “we are born to love, and learn fear.”

So the problem is not sin, but fear of punishment.

As a result, we have a growing epidemic of “mental illness,” suicide, addictions, and mass murder. 

Kindness and Honesty

 

A poet of Iranian ancestry writes:

“Instead of searching for the truth,
be kind to others.
There’s no truth beyond that.”

This seems to me to reflect a difference I have noticed between East and West. In America, Canada, or England, if you want to say someone is a good man, you say “he is honest.” But in China, if you want to identify someone as good, you say “he is kind.”

I think this is a telling difference in values. The West values truth above social harmony; the Far East values social harmony, keeping everyone happy, “kindness.” Perhaps Iran is more like the Far East.

I find another example in a Confucian story. It is meant to illustrate the essence of good morals. The righteous emperor heard an ox chosen for the annual sacrifice bellowing with fear on the way to slaughter. So he intervened and insisted that this ox be replaced by another. This demonstrated his impeccable morals. 

But to me as a Westerner, it looks only like sentimentality. After all, the next ox would still be slaughtered, and would quite likely be just as afraid. The emperor just didn’t have to hear about it. 

As a Westerner, I would almost reverse those lines: 

“Instead of trying to make others happy,
Seek and speak the truth.
There’s no kindness without that.”

I wonder if this comes specifically from Christianity.

Lord of the Flies

 

Back when I was going through high school, Lord of the Flies was a staple of the curriculum. It seems it still is, at least where it has not been replaced by the latest indigenous author. But I think the book is widely misunderstood.

It is commonly contrasted with Catcher in the Rye. The premise is that Catcher sees mankind as intrinsically good, but corrupted by adult society; the view of Rousseau and Marxism. Lord of the Flies sees man as intrinsically evil, but civilized by adult society. Supposedly the traditional “conservative” view.

One can see why educational authorities would therefore like the book, and this interpretation of it. It validates their authority. Even if they are Marxists, they are going to see themselves as the “vanguard of the proletariat.”

Yet neither view is coherent. If man is intrinsically good, how could they become evil when in groups? Where does evil get in? How can individuals not be greedy, yet corporations and governments are? 

Conversely, if man is intrinsically evil, how can people become good simply by joining in groups? Or by getting older, growing up? And as this obviously makes no sense, how does he ever become good?

Lord of the Flies expressly denies that society or government civilizes. There is a nuclear war going on; that is the context for the book. The strife among the abandoned boys only echoes what is happening in the adult world of governments. Ralph’s parents are divorced. Piggy’s mother is unaccounted for. 

The conch, symbol of authority on the island, is also the source of all the troubles. It is almost like the apple in Eden. If disorder and “fun” is deadly, social order in turn, seems inevitably bound in with the quest for power over others. Neither Ralph nor Piggy are immune from this; they both crave superiority and power over others, just as Jack and Roger do. The best organized and disciplined group on the island, the choir, becomes the most troublesome. The boy chosen by adult society for leadership turns out to be the most power-hungry and irresponsible.

And the role of the choir seems also to discount organized religion as a possible source of morality. These are the boys who would have been most thoroughly grounded in the faith.

The one truly good, altruistic character is Simon. Simon is “batty.” Simon sees visions. Simon likes to go off on his own and meditate. Simon can apparently read minds, and has intimations of the future. 

Morality and truth must come to us, then, deus ex machina. Which is to say, from revelation, from grace. Some few among us are prophets, in contact with a spirit world. They occasionally come down from the mountaintop, emerge from the wilderness, to deliver important truths from beyond.

They are likely to be ignored or considered mad.

Where do we find such characters in our present world? 

We know of the prophets in the Bible; and no doubt the Bible is a civilizational source of guidance and morality. 

But also in the works of solitary artists. In books like Lord of the Flies.

This is what civilizes us; this is what brings us what goodness or truth we find in this fallen world. It is literature and culture that dulls the power of the carrion impulses, the Lord of the Flies.

Darth Francis

 

At about the same time he is promoting the heresy of indifferentism, Pope Francis has also said that he cannot choose between the evils of Trump’s platform and that of Harris in the current US presidential election.

“Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don't know. Both are against life, be it the one that kicks out migrants, or the one that kills children."

This is a clear example of false moral equivalence. Francis is saying that to expel an intruder from your home is morally equivalent to murder.

This is obviously wrong; it amounts to an attempt to justify abortion.

Is it even wrong in the slightest to resist illegal immigration or to deport migrants?

Acts 17: 26 says it is God’s plan that nations and peoples have borders:

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

One doesn’t have the right to immigrate any more than one has the right to live in another man’s home.

It is not plausible that Francis does not know this. 

It is increasingly obvious that in our times we are fighting a war of good versus evil. The masks are off, and it is no longer a matter of people of good will coming to different conclusions. 

And Pope Francis is on the side of evil.

Twelve Rules for Life

 

I have not read Peterson’s Twelve Rules for Life. I do not intend to read it. So it is no doubt iunfair of me to criticise it. But its subtitle to my mind tells the story: “An Antidote to Chaos.” This is why I will not read it, and surely I can criticize the assumptions implicit in that subtitle.

It is, in the end, a book on ethics—that’s what “rules for life” means. It therefore seeks to replace traditional ethical codes, like the Ten Commandments.

This already sinister, and this is the problem with psychology in general: it substitutes random thoughts for religion. This is dangerous. “Psyche” means soul; the real, tried and true, wisdom concerning the soul, developed and preserved over millennia, is religion. “Scientific” psychology, by contrast, is never going to be as reliable. It claims to be superior as “science,” yet it has no scientific basis. The soul cannot be seen through a microscope. It is always only one guy expressing his opinions. Religion, by contrast, is the accumulated wisdom of the best minds over many generations.

And the real attraction of psychology to those who subscribe to it is not that it is “scientific” or more reliable. No serious student of the matter could think so. Its attraction is that it promises to dodge the traditional ethical demands. It is not “judgemental.” It accepts and promotes free sex, for just one example, and considers any guilt feelings bad. So those with a guilty conscience will cling to it, and with a fierce devotion never seen among the religious defending their faith. 

The subtitle makes it clear that Peterson is doing this here. The goal of his rules, of his proposed ethics, is avoiding chaos rather than doing good or avoiding evil.

Avoiding chaos is not a worthy goal. It sounds good, but sometimes order is not desirable. New ideas emerge from and create chaos. Have you ever seen a photograph of Einstein’s desk at Princeton? Push order as prime directive, and everything comes to a dead stop. The garden dies.

Reputedly, Peterson also identifies chaos with the feminine, and order with the masculine. He refers to chaos as “the eternal feminine.” He claims, apparently, that this is not his idea; it is a consistent association in world myth.

But it is not. Peterson has apparently not studied world myth that deeply. As is typically the case with psychologists; their knowledge is superficial, and they latch on to one or two motifs that seem to them to confirm their pre-existing ideas. Freud’s complete inversion of the story of Oedipus for his “Oedipus Complex” being the most famous example. 

In China, the dragon, lung, masculine, represents the Emperor. The phoenix, feng, feminine, represents the Empress. The dragon is the unbridled forces of nature. The phoenix is the bridle: grace and order. The feminine civilizes the masculine energy.

The very personification of order, and the moral order, in Greek mythology, is Dike, and she is feminine. Conversely, Zeus, the principle male deity in the Greek pantheon, is the storm god: an image of chaos. Who, not incidentally, cannot keep his fly zipped.

In the legend of Gilgamesh, the world’s first known epic, Enkidu, the wild man, is civilized by his first encounter with a woman.

In the Jewish and Christian tradition, Logos, order itself, is identified with Sophia, wisdom—and Sophia is always personified as feminine. As she is in the Hindu tradition as well—as the goddess Sarasvati.

Reading psychology is generally a way to get lost in the weeds. It is perhaps the leading cause of mental illness. Arguably, mental illness is entirely a product of psychology. Peterson, although he seems to be taking baby steps towards a more religious view, is still a false prophet.

The tragic thing is that the popularity of the book, and of Peterson, shows there is a tremendous thirst for spiritual guidance. And Peterson and his book are leading these poor vulnerable souls astray.

Dirty Feet

 

There has been a lot of ink already on the “He gets us” Superbowl ad showing people washing one another’s feet. I think the objections to it, from both left and right, are overreactions. It is at least well-intentioned.

“Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”

That seems to want to speak of God’s offer of forgiveness. Washing does imply the feet are dirty.

However, it seems to promote the troublesome recent redefinition of the word “hate” to mean “disapproval.” Just as “love” has been redefined to mean “coitus.” It shows a woman washing the feet of another woman outside an abortion clinic: seeming to imply that killing someone is not hateful, but objecting to killing someone is. A troublesome miscommunication, if not intended. Similarly, presumably, scolding your child for playing in traffic would mean you hate your child. And an umpire calling a ball player out at second base does so out of hatred.

Such messages do not make the world a better place. The road to Hell is paved with such good intentions.

Individualism

 

The height of selfishness

My students, asked to explain “individualism”—it comes up in our readings—invariably come up with “selfishness.” Xerxes seems to think the same. 

I suspect that this is the baleful influence of our Marxist/fascist education system. Which would sneer at "rugged individualism" and "cowboys." No doubt that is "White supremacist and "partiarchal."

If you think “individualism” means “selfishness,” then you must think Oskar Schindler was selfish; or Socrates, Qu Yuan, Thomas More, the Buddha, or Jesus Christ. Not to mention Einstein, Newton, Tolstoy, Picasso, Casey Jones, Father Damien, or Pasteur.

Individualism means you believe it is the duty and right of the individual to make decisions for himself or herself. To exercise free will and make ethical choices. No more going along with the crowd.

Without individualism, there is no morality, and no human progress. Only evil and decline.

“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.”

The Lessons of Fairyland

 

One of the most alarming trends in modern culture is the suppression of fairy tales and fables. 

These are critically important. Along with reading, writing, and arithmetic, the Bible and the catechism, they are entirely what a proper general education consists of. Fairy tales and fables exist to teach each new generation the vital lessons they need for life. 

And most kids today don’t know them—not the real stories.

Disney has played a role in this—the original Disney. He took the traditional stories and always altered the message to “finding a sex partner is the key to happiness.” Which was never in the original stories, with their spiritual concerns. How much of the sexual “revolution” that began in the 1950s was due to this? For example, in the original Sleeping Beauty, when the prince awakens her with a kiss, the plot is still only half unravelled. Her greatest troubles lie ahead, at the hands of a cannibalistic mother-in-law. The real Snow White is not awakened by a kiss—she is only seven years old--but when her corpse is dropped in transit. Nor is any frog turned into a prince by being kissed—he transforms when thrown against the wall in disgust.

One sees the trend.

But once the tales had been so trivialized, it got worse. Largely at the hands of the latter Disney Corp, but also thanks to feminists and pomos generally. 

The new trend is not just to ignore or suppress the moral lessons, but to invert them; along with the warnings of dangers to a child’s well-being.  One is now to trust wolves and witches and ogres, who are all noble, well-meaning, oppressed and discriminated against. A good way to usher young people into witches’ ovens and ogres’ cooking pots and the wolves’ dark interiors.

It all seems part of a larger holocaust of the young, which is a general narcissistic tendency. Narcissists hate children, over the thought that one day their children will survive them. 

And our society as a whole has been turning narcissistic, immoral and selfish.

The Bigger Beating Up the Lesser

 

The good guy?

Friend Xerxes, in a recent private conversation, made guilelessly clear why the far left is generally in support of Hamas in the current Gaza struggle: because Israel is “the bigger beating up the lesser.”

Obvious enough, but also revelatory. This would seem to be, to the left, the only thing that matters: whoever is judged to be weaker, to have less power, is automatically in the right.

Consider intersectionality. Nobody in a designated “oppressed” group can be accused of being racist or oppressive. “Whites,” however, are racist and oppressive no matter what they think or do or have done, because they are supposedly in power: “privileged.”

It is not necessarily the correct perception in this case that Israel is the stronger, and Hamas the weaker. It is foolish for a weaker party to attack a stronger one; and Hamas attacked Israel. But the Arabs are all one ethnicity, by any traditional measure: the same language, the same religion, the same government until divided recently by European powers. Hamas no doubt hoped that the rest of the Arab world would come to their assistance, should hostilities begin, as they did in 1967 or 1973--not to mention the rest of the Muslim world, which is, in principle, supposed to be one political entity, Dar al Islam. In this wider context, Israel is a little sliver of land and a local population surrounded by powerful enemies.

But then too, those designated by the left as oppressed and weak minorities is also arbitrary: women, although the majority of the population is female; non-whites, although the majority of the world is non-white; and so on.

I think it was always objectively improbable, since the Abraham Accords, that Hamas would have received direct and immediate military support. But they might have hoped to flip the growing consensus for peace for the future.

But, not to get bogged down in this one case, if the left’s overall moral logic is correct, Al Qaeda was also in the right to strike the World Trade Centre: after all, Osama Bin Laden’s resources were less than America’s. But then, the left actually is currently thinking better of Osama and his justifications.

Japan was also, apparently, in the right to bomb Pearl Harbor: the USA was the bigger country. They were, therefore, the bullies.

But the idea that the weaker party is always in the right is moral nonsense. It certainly wouldn’t do, for example, as a parenting principle. The child is always right, then, and the parent always wrong?

Nevertheless, you see it in the left’s call a couple of years ago to defund the police: since the police have more power than the criminals, it is the police who are at fault, not the criminals.

Yet it is simply the doctrine of “might makes right” inverted. And it is self-defeating: if you support the weaker party to win, then, if it wins, you must oppose it as the stronger party. And so the wheel spins eternally, in constant blood and strife.

So why, since it is so destructive and nonsensical, does the left want to apply so assiduously?

Because it is an alibi for the sin of envy. 

If you are not morally developed, you will naturally resent anyone who seems to be doing better than you are, or does things better than you. You want to pull them down.

Like the desire to pull down statues of any recognized heroes.

Envy is the sin of Cain against Abel: if another seems favoured by fortune or by God, you resent them and seek their harm. It helps if you can declare them a “bully,” or “arrogant,” or rapacious, or greedy, simply for revealing their talents.

That would, for example, explain why the left calls Trump a bully. He skewers his opponents too well.

That explains why Bin Laden targeted the World Trade Center. It was too impressive a structure.

That explains antisemitism. The Jews are objectively highly accomplished as an ethnicity. 

That explains anti-white hatred; the same observation applies. They have accomplished too much to be allowed to live in peace.

And that is the way of the world.

The Stolen Thrones

 

The Rolling Stones have a certain reputation. It is worth pointing out that it is all a sham.

I recently watched a documentary series on the Stones, aired by the CBC.

In in, Keith Richards refers to Mick Jagger as a very honourable man. Ron Wood refers to Richards as “a very moral guy,” and portrays him as being not just moral, but moralistic. Charlie Watts has stayed married to the same woman throughout their fame, and has avoided all the groupie action, despite the obvious and overwhelming temptations. Wood speaks of the band being guided by a “higher power”—the AA standard reference to God—and things coming to them “from above.”

It is true that members of the group have had drug problems. This is common among musicians. Apparently it is difficult to get up there on stage night after night as if you are someone special, and then have to prove it with your playing. Almost everyone seems to resort to drugs of some sort to steady their nerves. Many get addicted. Occupational hazard.

It is true that Bill Wyman, the original bassist, had a reputation for womanizing. But again, this is an occupational hazard, and another kind of addiction. Women will throw themselves at you if you perform onstage, or if you are famous. As Trump has famously remarked, and been condemned for pointing out. It would be hard for anyone to resist this temptation. And Richards has publicly scolded Wyman for giving in to it so completely.

"Sympathy for the Devil"? Listen to the lyrics. It is not on his side. Or listen to "Salt of the Earth"--a restatement of the Beatitudes. Or "Prodigal Son"; an uncritical restatement of the parable.

Jagger does not say that the “bad boy” image is wrong; it would be imprudent to do so, would damage the brand. And Jagger is a smart man and a canny businessman, someone who is able to give an interview in fluent French. But he does tell the interviewer that they are the same sort of blokes as the Beatles, and have always hung out with them. When the Beatles were marketed, at least initially, as fun-loving but essentially nice young men, the Stones management intentionally created the “bad boy” image for the Stones for marketing purposes, to distinguish the product.

In other words, it’s hype. People in general are incredibly naïve, and will usually just accept whatever hype they are fed.

One Hell of a Hangover

 

Buddhist Bardo

Friend Xerxes declares, without details, that he came to a “rational conclusion” long ago that there is no afterlife. 

Yet he then presents evidence from his own experience that there is an afterlife. He hears his late wife’s voice; he feels her move beside him in the bed.

He dismisses it only by denying Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction, which is the foundation of all rational thought. He says there is no “either/or,” only “both/and.”

In other words, his belief that there is no afterlife is unmoveable by either reason or evidence. The phrase “long ago” here is telling: he, like many another, has his heart set on no life after death, and will not permit himself to think any more about it. It is a doctrine in literal denial of both reason and evidence. On what basis, then, does h hold it?

The New Atheists commonly claim that belief in an afterlife is wish fulfillment. “Pie in the sky when you die.” This is projection. Most people do not want there to be an afterlife. If there is no afterlife, we can do as we please here and now and get away with it.

The concept of an afterlife comes with the concept of cosmic justice, and always has, world-wide. We will one day stand naked before God, all our acts revealed. We must submit to a higher authority than ourselves. According to the Ojibwe, wild dogs will tear us apart for our sins. In Hindu or Buddhist terms, we must pay our karmic debt. Merely ceasing to exist, to break this cycle, is the ultimate Buddhist or Hindu hope: “nirvana” means non-being.

As with so many, Xerxes does not believe in an afterlife because he does not want there to be an afterlife. There is nothing to fear in simply going sleep and never waking up; there is nothing to fear in being blown out like a candle.

On the other hand, his love of his late wife is saying something different. Love speaks of the eternal. Or his wife is herself calling him, out of her love for him.

A Fishy Tale

 

Friend Xerxes, the left-listing columnist, explains recently to his readers that the Catholic Lenten fast is actually because, in late winter and early spring, all the meat was likely rotten, and in older times our misbegotten ancestors had to make do with vegetables. Poor sots.

This is of course ridiculous. Livestock does not die off in the fall, nor do they migrate south. Any peasant who could afford meat at other times of the year could have fresh meat in spring if they so wished. Not to mention the various means of preserving meat without modern refrigeration: smoking, drying, salting. It is fruits and vegetables, the very things permitted by the fast, that would have been in short supply in early spring.

We also have the testimony of early church fathers, St. Jerome, St. Leo the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Isidore of Seville, that the Lenten fast was passed down to us from the apostles.

A similar familiar claim is that the Friday and Lenten fasts were a scheme to support the fishing industry. 

But even in pre-Christian times, religious fasts allowed the eating of cold-blooded animals. Taxonomies were different; in effect, the line then was set at cold versus warm blooded, whereas modern Western vegetarians set it at whether the creature has the ability to move, the plant/animal distinction. The rule in Buddhist vegetarianism is, you do not eat anything that recognizably has a face.

There is, clearly, a general desire to discount fasting as a religious or moral practice. It is reflected in my own experience: people want to believe I am vegetarian for health reasons. They become subtly hostile when they hear it is for moral reasons.

People fear morality. This is the eternal battle.

Have a great Friday.

The Season of Creation

Friend Xerxes alerts us that in the month of September, “Christians around the world join in the Season of Creation.”

“For far too long, Christian churches have ignored the environment we live in. Indeed, we have used the words in Genesis as excuses to ‘multiply’ and to ‘subdue the earth.’”

            “The Season of Creation challenges us to recognize that we are part of this earth, not separate from it.”

Good of Xerxes to let me know. This “Season of Creation” does not appear in the Catholic liturgical calendar, and it has never been mentioned at a parish I attend. 

Indeed, it is hard to see how it fits in: the liturgical calendar traces the process of salvation, from anticipation of Christmas to the Feast of Christ the King. It is not about creation and the time before the Fall. Nor is celebrating rivers and rocks the concern of religion in general. That is more the purview of empirical science.

Which our culture is perhaps inordinately concerned with, on the whole. It is the ethics and the salvation and the next life we tend to forget.

Which I guess justifies Xerxes’s assertion that Christian churches have ignored the environment. Indeed, the Bible tells us to be “in this world, but not of it,” and the Church warns against the temptations of “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” 

Moreover, Exodus tells us “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” One ought not, in sum, to worship nature. This is the great temptation, the great idolatry.

In Genesis 1, as Xerxes admits, God’s prime directive to mankind is “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” God, apparently, is making “excuses.” For yeah, what we really all want is the guilty pleasure of working hard, raising a family, and bettering the world, instead of lying back and admiring the sunsets.

The point of man is to take the clay and breathe spirit into it: to spiritualize the raw material of creation to build the New Jerusalem. Moreover, the essence of morality is the struggle against our natural instincts.  That is what raises us above weasels and wolverines.

So it seems we have a choice: either follow God, the good, the wisdom of the ages, the reason for our existence, and the spiritual universe of art and culture; or follow Xerxes, Mother Nature, and the World Council of Churches.

We have come to the crossroads.

Why We Can No Longer Get Along

 

Acceptable

Unacceptable.

Years ago, on an email list that shall remain nameless, I expressed some dissatisfaction with the government interfering in some way in free markets. This in a resolutely left-wing milieu.

There was no immediate backlash. Instead, they wanted to know if I was a Randite, a follower of Ayn Rand.

It was when I objected to Rand’s philosophy as immoral that the backlash began. Had I been an objectivist, it seems it would still have been okay.

So the issue that divides the left and right is not really free markets vs. collectivism, or big government vs small government, as one might have imagined.

Similarly, when people learn I am a vegetarian, their first question is whether it is for health reasons. Why is this the inevitable question? Why does it matter?

Because people do not resent vegetarians if they do it for health reasons. If they do it for moral reasons, I can attest, another’s vegetarianism is indeed resented.

Along the same lines, why do so many object so much to members of minority religions evangelizing them at their door? At a minimum, the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Salvation Army do it of good heart; they want your fellowship, and are trying to save you from Hell. What could be a greater kindness?

The problem is that a growing number of people have very guilty consciences. Those who have a guilty conscience will hate anyone bringing up the subject of right and wrong. They will even hate anyone who acts morally.

To the point of crucifixion.

This explains the current breakdown in civil discourse. The US even seems to be barrelling toward civil war.

The same principle can explain the eternal persecution of the Jews. The Jews, after all, invented/discovered ethical monotheism. They personify and embody The Moral Law.

It also explains the familiar saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Which those who have lived to my age can generally attest is true. Good people will appreciate a good deed; but many bad people will want to hurt you for it.

And it explains why it is those who were most favourably disposed towards Canada’s Indians, Sir John A. Macdonald, Edgerton Ryerson, the Catholic Church, are now so defamed and their statues toppled; in America or Britain, those who were most openly against slavery, like Thomas Jefferson or Sir Henry Dundas, are those condemned as slavers—and not the advocates of slavery.

The usual charge against all moralists, as in these cases, is “hypocrisy.” Which does not apply here at all. . Hypocrisy means holding others to a higher standard than oneself. Believing in and advocating morality is not a claim of personal sinlessness. It is those who old moralists to a higher standard than themselves for believing in the importance of morality who are hypocrites.

I fear a pending housing crisis in hell.

Abortion Unwound

 

The young adult novel Unwind is being used to teach our children. Resolutely woke, it argues the case for abortion. This hinges, apparently, on when a human being gets a soul. It gives four positions, presumably spanning the field:

• At conception
• At quickening—"when the baby kicks”
• At birth
• When someone loves it.

And then the novel gives its own conclusion: that we really do not know. 

Therefore, no one has a right to impose their own views on the next person.

“If more people could admit they really don’t know, maybe there never would have been a Heartland War.”

Therefore, unrestricted abortion.

It is indeed true that we do not know whether a child at any given age has a soul. We also do not know whether Jews have souls. We do not know whether blacks have souls. Or women. We actually do not know whether anyone other than ourself has a soul, is conscious and self-conscious. We cannot see or hear the soul, or consciousness, or thoughts, other than our own. Everyone else might be imagined, or simulations, or alien lizard people.

Accordingly, this argument for unrestricted abortion is just as serviceable as an argument for unrestricted murder, or genocide. 

“Hey, nobody likes the Jews. That mean they don’t have souls. Let’s kill them and take their stuff.”

Why is it morally necessary to assume all other humans have souls? Because of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you are not prepared to accept that these lizard people or simulations have the right to kill you on a whim, you must not claim for yourself the same right over them. You cannot honourably take to yourself a right you would not want everyone else to have.

The question, therefore, is when the foetus is alive, and when it becomes human. 

It is identifiably human at conception, and it is identifiably alive.

Any other position ends in holocaust.

Black Hats

 

More woke wisdom from Unwind, the novel your children are reading in high school:

“One thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have—people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives.”

The rap against American culture is that it tends to be white hats against black hats: villains in American novels and movies are one-dimensionally evil. Think of “Injun Joe “in Tom Sawyer.

Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture. Yes; and culture is downstream from religion. This tendency to such a clear divide between good and evil characters comes, I warrant, from America’s Calvinist upbringing. Baptists are the dominant American denomination, especially in the South. Baptists are Calvinists. New England was settled by the Pilgrims. They were Calvinists. New York was settled by Dutch Reformed: Calvinist. By contrast, England is Anglican, a bit of everything; Canada Catholic and Methodist; not Calvinist.

Calvinism believes in predestination. People are simply created for salvation or damnation, good or evil. They do not have a choice. They do not have free will. This does not leave a great deal of room for character development; or for moral ambiguity.

No doubt in reaction, Unwound and modern wokery go too far. If we are all just moving in and out of darkness all our lives, there is no moral distinction to be made between Adolph Hitler and Albert Schweitzer; between Charlie Manson and Mother Teresa.

They preserve the idea that we have no free will, and ditch the idea that there is either salvation or damnation. Wrong move. 

The Catholic understanding is that we all sin; we must struggle constantly against temptation. Some of us have given up the fight, turned away from the good and committed ourselves to evil. In Jesus’s words, some of us seek the darkness and fear the light. Others, the saints, shine like a city on a hill.

 There are indeed good and bad people. But a bad person can become good.

Abortion, War, and Being Unwound

 

The fundamental problem with the young adult novel Unwind, now being studied in a classroom near you, is found in this passage:

“In a perfect world mothers would all want their babies, and strangers would open up their homes to the unloved. In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn’t a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.”

On the face of it, this makes no sense. Who thinks it is a perfect world? Not the left, who are always on about social injustice. Not the religious right, who say the world is fallen. 

What seems to be meant is that the problem is people who think things are either black or white, right or wrong. People who believe in morality; who would condemn a mother for not loving her baby, or people for not helping a stranger in need, as if they could know these things are wrong.

In other words, this is a rejection of the idea of morality itself. Right and wrong are only matters of personal preference, whim.

This is the dogma of the modern classroom. I got it drilled into me myself long ago in grad school, even back in the Seventies. One must never be “judgmental.” That was automatically wrong. One must never assert anything as true. That was arrogant. 

It took me decades to unlearn this; perhaps I am still tainted by it.

The book, lacking self-awareness, contradicts itself only a few pages later. Lev, a deeply religious kid who believes being killed for his organs is a good thing, because this is what he has been taught, has been kidnapped by Connor and Risa, wanting to save his life. 

So he escapes and reports to the nearest authority, the school administration.

“From here in the nurse’s office, Lev has no way of knowing if they’ve captured Connor and Risa. He hopes that, if they have, they don’t bring them here. The thought of having to face them makes him feel ashamed. Doing the right thing shouldn’t make you ashamed.”

In other words, despite his indoctrination by his family, his pastor, his religion, the government, and the educational system, Lev knows innately that Connor and Risa are in the right, and he is in the wrong.

Everyone does know the difference between right and wrong. Conscience will out. Such things are not socially determined.

When I dispute the initial claim, that nobody really knows what is right or wrong, I get a great deal of resistance from students. Particularly because the context seems to be abortion. They have  been well indoctrinated already; they simply will not say that abortion is ever in any way wrong. They will not even agree that it is a necessary evil. No, you can’t say anything is evil.

Then I ask “is war wrong?” And they immediately agree, seemingly without having to stop to consider. They have always been taught this too: that war is wrong in all circumstances. Despite the logical inconsistency. They had apparently never noticed it before. Some students realize the contradiction at this point, some seem not to.

Then I point out the passage featuring Lev’s thoughts on turning in Connor and Risa. 

Here they always, so far, fall silent. 

Poor kids.

On Demonizing the Left

 

Sam Smith at the Grammys

One way to understand Andrew Coyne’s recent complaint about “demonization” of the left by the right is as a backhanded admission that, should the right go down this route the left have been crowding for so long, it would be devastating for the left.

I am reminded of Nathanial Erskine-Smith’s concern, in defending the Emergency Act, at the right raising the issue of the Nuremberg Code.

This struck me at the time, because I had never heard anyone on the right mentioning the Nuremberg Accords. Kin fact, I had never heard of the Nuremberg Code. I had to look it up. They were a code of conduct for medical experimentation, agreed upon after the Second World war, in reaction to the Nazis using prisoners in medical experiments. Those participating in the testing of experimental drugs or procedures must give informed consent.

And yes, reading the text,there was a strong case that, in mandating anti-Covid vaccines, the Canadian government was in violation of the Nuremburg Accords. People were being forced to use an experimental drug, the long-term effects of which could not possibly be known.

Thanks for the tipoff, Nate. It proves that the left is not acting out of ignorance. They know exactly what they are doing.

Coyne’s warning says the same. They know they are demonic.

Where, these days, are you likely to encounter an open endorsement of Satan? Among members of the Biden administration. Among the designers of the Target line of trans clothing. And these are people endorsed and embraced by the rest of the left. 

Who is in open rebellion against “conventional morality”? Who is burning down churches and dressing in mockery as nuns?

It is not as if they are being subtle about it.

The left is responsible for a genocide against the unborn: unrestricted abortion.

They are responsible for many deaths through their imposition of vaccine mandates. Not for the vaccine—one can accept that the rushing of the vaccine was done for the best of intentions, even if unwise or unnecessar in retrospect. But they surely killed people by imposing mandates, and they imposed mandates after it would have been clear to those in control that the vaccines did not work to prevent transmission and carried serious risks. They imposed mandates right when there was no medical justification for them, unless the intent was to kill people.

They are responsible for a growing genocide against the old, the infirm, and the mentally ill with their promotion of “medical assistance in dying,” previously known as euthanasia. They can claim consent; but that argument is flawed. The old, poor, ill and weak are, by definition, the most vulnerable among us. They can easily be pressured into giving consent; and there is much evidence this is happening. The mentally ill in particular are commonly understood not to be competent to give consent. They can now  be executed by the very families who drove them to madness. The elderly suffering dementia must only hope their children are not too eager to receive their inheritance.

The left is responsible for another, separate genocide against the poor and mentally ill too in their push for “safe supply” of addictive drugs, with no attention given to treatment or recovery. When was this a good idea? Did we ever treat alcoholism by giving out free whisky? 

While the approach might once have been defensible in theory—just conceivably--the left is doubling down even after the statistics roll in showing the spike in deaths.

They are responsible for physically mutilating and sterilizing children—the drive to “gender affirming surgery,” even behind the backs of parents. The motive can only be malice; malice against children. In no other circumstance would we consider children competent to make such life-altering decisions. 

The simple truth is that the left wants everyone—everyone else but themselves—dead. They are even open about this. They talk of people as a cancer on the planet. They will persist and push forward with this until and unless the rest of us call them out.

You don’t get more demonic than this.

Pearls before Swine

 

Friend Xerxes has reinforced my view that most people cannot understand any message conveyed in parable or narrative form. He has recently weighed in on the meaning of several popular fairy tales.

He advises that Hansel and Gretel teaches us that “adding a new person to an existing group always creates tensions.”

He means the stepmother.

This is not a viable interpretation. To begin with, it ignores morality. Apparently, she meant no harm in leaving the children in the forest to be devoured by wild beasts. It was just some perfectly reasonable or else instinctive reaction to the tension of being new to the family. No doubt any of us would have done the same. 

Next, in the original version of the story, she is the childrens’ biological mother, not a stepmother. The Grimms introduced the “stepmother” concept, here and elsewhere, because they thought the story was otherwise too disturbing for their readership.  Being unfair to stepmothers everywhere. 

So stepmotherhood is hardly the main point of the story. She is not a new person added to the group.

Next, this ignores the culpability of the father, who agrees to the deed.

Next, it ignores the witch, who is the worse villain.

The real message of Hansel and Gretel is that children should not trust adults. Including their own parents. They should be alert to the dangers, and they should stick together in solidarity.

Next, Xerxes explains that Goldilocks and the Three Bears teaches us that the good is always found in the mean, the average between two extremes. Goldilocks discovers this by sampling the three bowls of porridge, sitting on the three chairs, and sleeping in the three beds. In each case, one is “just right.”

Yet it is not clear that Goldie’s preference is always for the mean. Of the three beds, she prefers not the one of average size, for example, but the smallest, and specifically on the basis of its size. It was neither too long at the head, nor too long at the foot. It is forced to see that as an average. Similarly, while she preferred one chair as neither too soft nor too hard, it was also the smallest, and the weakest—a point made most salient by the fact that she broke it. Again, it is arbitrary to read this as the average of the three chairs.

And it is hard to see how, had she chosen to prefer a different bowl of porridge, chair, or bed as her favourite, this would have had any impact on the major action of the story. She still would have been eaten by the bears—as the original story ends. Or have had to jump out the window and run away—as the common bowdlerized version has it. 

The real message of Goldilocks is that children should be respectful of others’ property, and not trespass or greedily grab things. The bit of business about trying each bowl of porridge, each bed, and each chair, is to show that Goldilocks has no concern for others, supposing everything is for her pleasure.

Lastly, our faithful lefty correspondent tackles Little Red Riding Hood. It is apparently about how we expect to be rescued from our troubles by some trusty woodsman. The issue is who that woodsman is: is it government, or private enterprise?

He prefers government

However, in the original story, there is no woodsman. Little Red Riding Hood just gets eaten by the wolf, as does her grandmother. The woodsman, like the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel, was introduced by modern reteller fearing the original story was too shocking for readers.

The point of the story of LRRH is the same as that of Hansel and Gretel—and of most fairy tales. Children should not trust adults. Not even their own grandmother. And they must therefore always be on their guard, keep their wits about them.

Why does Xerxes consistently get the point wrong? Aren’t the real messages obvious?

I think it is because he, and most of us, avoid moral interpretations and any reference to morals at all cost. Moral references or any suggestion of divine retribution make us feel frightened and guilty.