On Forgiveness and Repentance

 

I recently attended another “Life in the Spirit” session put on by my local Catholic diocese. It was all about forgiveness: the need to forgive yourself and others. 

We have had no session on repentance. 

I fear this is to put the cart before the horse. You can’t have one without the other, and the import of the session and the course seems to be that you can.

Notice the progression in the New Testament: first John the Baptist, then Jesus. First repentance, then salvation. One must make the ways straight for the Lord.

“In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

In the session I attended, forgiveness was claimed to heal illness—not just your “mental health,” either. One story was of a woman who, once she forgave her neighbour, was cured of a goiter within a week. And it was of course claimed to improve your relationships.

This is selling it for other than religious reasons. This is selling it as psychology, as worldly wisdom. A Christian as Christian is supposed to do things because they are right, and out of love of God, not because they are good for our health or our finances. Why this approach?

I think they are doing this because the idea of forgiveness without repentance cannot be justified philosophically or theologically. It violates our sense of natural justice, which is to say of the Good. And God is perfect Good, Truth, and Beauty. So you cannot sell it as righteous, as the morally right thing.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” – says Jesus in the Beatitudes. This hunger is incompatible with unconditional forgiveness.

The speaker of course had his Biblical references. But they were partial, and misleadingi.

Their killer claim was that Jesus forgave his own killers from the cross—as they were killing him. How’s that for unconditional forgiveness?

But they are ignoring the second half of that sentence: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” This condition implies that their actions are objectively unforgivable. They are excused by ignorance. This is the principle used to test for a mortal sin.

"Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent." - CCC

To be guilty of the sin, you must be aware of the significance of what you are doing. In the case of the crucifixion, the soldiers were just doing their job, and presumably did not know he was an innocent man, much less that he was God incarnate.

The second Biblical warrant cited for forgiveness without repentance was the parable of the unmerciful servant, Matthew 18:21-35. Forgiven a debt by his master, he will not forgive a debt owed to him. 

But they omit his repentance:

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’”

Imagine the debtor had denied the debt. Doesn’t that make a difference?

Forgiveness, as such, is not the Christian message. Jesus is not forgiving of the Pharisees, scribes, or Sadducees. 

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

He is not forgiving of the moneychangers at the temple. John the Baptist is not forgiving of Herod Antipas; and Jesus fully endorses John the Baptist. 

To understand the injustice of this doctrine of forgiveness without repentance, imagine your government is exterminating Jews. Are you obliged to quietly forgive? How about if you are Jewish? That is a way to stay healthy and safe, but it is not the moral way.

Imagine your community is practicing slavery. Forgive and do nothing? 

Imagine Kitty Genovese is being raped and murdered in your stairwell. Forgive and do nothing?

No—beyond a right and duty of self-defense, you have a right to fight evil when you see it around you. “None so guilty as the innocent bystander.” Consider the saintly models of St. Michael, St. George, or St. Joan of Arc. 

When nothing can be done, when the evil is beyond our power to end, the proper attitude is not forgiveness, but resignation. To turn the other cheek. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” We try to shame the perpetrator, let go and let God, and try to get on with our lives.

When the guilty party admits their guilt and tries to make good, then we must forgive.

“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.”

Witness the sacrament of Reconciliation: to be forgiven by God himself, we must be sincerely sorry, resolve not to commit the same sin again, and must accept some penance. This is God’s way, and he models it to be our way.

And what is not repaid by penance in this life, must be made up in Purgatory.

It is not a mercy to forgive someone their sin who has not sincerely repented. For to do so is to encourage him in his sin, and lead him on the path to Hell. We owe him the duty of fraternal correction.

Vice is an addiction, like alcohol. The more often you do it, the easier it gets to override your conscience. And affirmation by others does not help. 

My own uncle was an alcoholic. His father, my grandfather, was exceptionally mild-mannered, and just put up with it. And, owning a company, he kept his errant son on the payroll so he would not be destitute. He was a model of forgiveness.

Then my grandfather died. My father inherited the company. He fired his older brother.

My uncle told me he is eternally grateful to my father for this. 

There he was, alone in his apartment, with the rent due in two weeks, and no way to pay it. In his desperation, he reached for a book his mother had given him, on St. Luke the Evangelist. He began to read. Through the strength of God, he sobered up, and has remained sober since.

It was cruel to have kept forgiving him for such a long time.

The real motivation for this false gospel is always brought up last. Because, after all, it is shameful. It is the supposed need to forgive “even yourself.”

This is paydirt. Jesus has already paid for all my sins. He loves me unconditionally. Why would I need to change? If anyone points out my sins—they are the bad ones. I can just keep punching my brother in the face, keep swindling him, and that’s all right. If he complains—shame on him. He is failing in his duty to forgive.

It reeks of Pharisaism. 

On Burning the Boats of Sin

I recently attended a “Life in the Spirit” —Catholic charismatic—talk. It troubled me; I think it got a critical matter wrong. I fear the speaker misrepresented the scriptures.

His main claim was that, if you accept Jesus as your personal saviour, all your sins are forgiven. You will not be blamed or called to account for your sins. 

“Thanks to the death of Jesus, we also die to sin, because a dead person cannot be blamed for any of his past errors.”

This is clearly not traditional Catholic teaching. What about the sacrament of reconciliation, aka penance? What about purgatory? What about the Last Judgment?

To illustrate, the speaker refers to Cortez burning his ships so his soldiers could not retreat from the conquest of Mexico. Once you accept Jesus, there is just no turning back to sin.

Really? Why then does Paul tell the Philippians to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” What is the fear? Why the trembling?

According to this new happy happy joy joy version of Catholicism, Jesus’s love is unconditional. So all we need to do is recognize his love, and all is well between us.

But this is contradictory: it seems his love is indeed still conditional, if there is a need for us to recognize it. That is a condition. But does it seem a fair and just condition, worthy of a just and merciful God, to make that the test? We get to heaven just by feeling good about ourselves? And if we instead feel bad about ourselves, we ought to go to hell as punishment?

The speaker does cite scripture. I quote:

“And there is no longer any condemnation for me, that I am in Christ Jesus. This is marvelous. And I don't say it; Paul says it in the epistle to the Romans.”

That is, Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

But what does it mean to be “in Christ Jesus”? The speaker would have it that this means accepting Jesus as your saviour. This is not self-evidently so. It might mean taking on the spirit of Jesus, thinking and behaving as Jesus does and did, and as he commands us. And we avoid condemnation only so long as we can remain in this frame of mind.

Seeming to bear out this latter interpretation, further on in the same passage of Philippians, Paul says those who live in Christ Jesus “do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” “Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”

So it seems to me the speaker in this talk is misrepresenting scripture.

The speaker goes on to give three examples from the Gospels of sinners who had their sins forgiven. But each time, he falsifies the passage in a critical way: he leaves out the need for repentance.

First is the woman taken in adultery, John 8; ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” When no one else will stone her, Jesus sends her off with the command, “go and sin no more.”

The speaker takes this to mean she has been given the power never to sin.

“When she was found out, she knew that the only door open to her was the door of being stoned. But she met Jesus, who is the saving door. … What she needed most was peace. Peace with herself, peace with her accusers, peace in this world…. But now, with his forgiveness, she will be able to overcome sin, and she will do so in peace.”

What she needed, then, was to stop feeling guilty about her sin.

But the gospel says nothing about her inner thoughts, about her needing or finding peace. The one clear indication of her inner thoughts is that, when all her accusers fade away, she remains standing there. Jesus is looking away, at the ground. She refuses to take the obvious opportunity to escape death. She insists on facing judgement, and consents that she deserves death. Only then is she forgiven.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

11 “No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

It is not that she found peace, but that she accepted guilt and found remorse.

Zaccheus is our speaker’s second example: the tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus passing by.

 “This man, Zacchaeus,” our interlocutor explains, “regained peace with himself. And not only with himself, the whole family of Zacchaeus, because it says that he [Jesus] ‘entered this house, this family.’ Such was the salvation given by Jesus to Zacchaeus.”

Once again, this false teacher omits the critical detail that Zaccheus repents of his sins—and also offers full restitution and more. “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.’”

Our false teacher’s third example is The Good Thief. Quoting again: “He is one of the few who call Jesus by name, the thief is very confident and says to him, ‘You are Jesus, which means: you are the Savior, the salvation of God for this world, for me. And I do not ask much of you, I ask only that you remember me when you are in your kingdom, because I know that you are King, I know that crown of thorns is your glory. I know that that cross is your throne. Remember me now when you die, for I know that you have only a few minutes to live. But you are going to sit on the eternal throne of David. So, remember me."

But this is mostly invention. 

The actual passage:

“38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’

42 Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”

It is not heroic to call someone by their name. Nor is it a striking act of faith for the thief to acknowledge Jesus as king and messiah. That might just as well be mockery. If not, it looks like Pascal’s wager: you never know, and what did the thief have to lose?

But the striking thing is that the thief acknowledges that his sins deserve crucifixion. That is heroic. Not only that— he rebukes the other thief for asking for rescue, because his punishment is just. He will not ask to be saved from punishment; he wants justice.

This is how God combines perfect justice with perfect mercy; only when we are prepared to accept the full measure of punishment can we be forgiven.

For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

Sometimes helpfully guided by false prophets.

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.”

Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

 

Yesterday I wrote on the nature of original sin and “original blessedness.” “Man is born to love, but learns fear,” the theme of a recent talk I attended, is wrong. Man is born with an inclination to sin.  Nor is this inclination eliminated b baptism, nor by faith in Christ. As the Bible says, we must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.” 

Even leaving aside the Bible, consider the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”

“The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.” (Gaudium et Spes, 37 § 2). 

Of the heresy of Pelagianism, the Catechism notes: “Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example.”

Which is what our sermonizer of the last post did: he reduced original sin to the example of our parents.

“Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature, inclined to evil,” the Catechism warns, “gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals.”

This is the fatal flaw in left-wing thinking since Rousseau. His notion of original blessedness led to the excesses of the French Revolution, Romanticism, Marx and Communism. It fosters the tragic mirage of a paradise on earth, created by human effort. It has killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions in the attempt.

To give the Devil his turn at the podium, our speaker cited the parable of the Prodigal Son as evidence of God’s readiness to forgive.

The prodigal spent all his inheritance. Yet his father, representing God the Father, did not reject him, but welcomed him home and killed a fatted calf in his honour.

The first common misunderstanding is that the son’s fault was in taking his inheritance and leaving home. No, it was being prodigal—that is, he spent all his inheritance. ”He squandered his property in reckless living.”

And it is essential to notice that he did not just come running to Abba to be embraced. Like Job, he repented in dust and ashes. He prepared this speech for his father, and delivered it: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” 

God cannot forgive our sins unless we are both fully repentant and prepared to accept just punishment. No Get out of Jail Free. This is the step the evil ones always elide in the telling.

Compare the Good Thief, who died on a cross next to Jesus. He was granted heaven despite his sins. 

Why? 

Because he accepted that his punishment was deserved and just. He rebuked the third thief, who mocked Jesus: “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”

This is why the sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation includes penance. This is why there is a purgatory, or we must believe there is. Only then can we hope for God’s forgiveness. We cannot expect it. “Thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Nor is the repentant prodigal of the parable, significantly, going to get another inheritance to replace the one he squandered. Too many miss this, wanting to stress forgiveness. He does not achieve equal standing with the brother who had not sinned. When the son who had remained objected to the feast his errant sibling was getting in his honour, the father responded by telling him, “all that is mine is yours.” 

That, surely, suggests that the prodigal gets no second inheritance. He gets, no doubt, secure food and lodging; but will remain now forever a lodger.

In terms of the afterlife, this suggests that the repentant sinner achieves heaven, the Divine Presence, reconciled to God. But there are ranks in heaven. We know this from the listed ranks of angels, the reference in Revelations to those “close to the throne,” and Jesus’s reference to “the least in heaven” when speaking of John the Baptist. 

He, the repentant sinner, will be given no authority.

God does not spoil his children.

Sin and Repentance

 

This last Sunday’s second reading reminds us of a basic tenet of Christianity that is commonly misunderstood by non-Christians—as well as many Christians.

Truncated, St. Paul writes, “God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.” – Romans 11:32

Non-Christians consider it intolerable that the church declares something they do sinful: homosexual sex is the obvious example, but we might also mention masturbation, using artificial birth control, chastity outside of marriage, and so forth. This is unreasonable; this is oppressive. The church is just being prejudiced, or prudish. 

Then they will point to some priest(s) or bishop(s), or practicing Catholic(s) they know, whom they know or believe do these things themselves. So they will accuse the Church and Christians of hypocrisy.

They will also point to the known or supposed misdeeds of Catholic saints. Saint Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor, had Protestants burned at the stake! So Catholics approve of burning Protestants at the stake!

They are making the gravely wrong assumption that a good Christian never sins. According to the Christian teaching, as Saint Paul says above, everyone sins. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23).

The morality demanded by Christ is perfection. It makes no allowance for human frailty: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

If you call someone a fool, this is as bad as murdering him. If you look at a woman lustfully, this is as bad as raping her. And so forth.

Jesus is not being unreasonable. You are being unreasonable to declare yourself righteous and without sin. You are not God. 

You do not go to Hell for having sinned; you go to Hell for denying that you have sinned. The mark of the true Christian is repentance, not self-righteousness. If you admit and sincerely regret your flaws, God will forgive. If you do not, he cannot.

The Words of the Prophet

Leonard Cohen was a true prophet, and foresaw the current social collapse in the US back in 1992. He sang about it in “The Future.”

“Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order.”
Over every living soul And lie beside me, baby That's an order.”

Here, he is speaking from the Nazi/postmodern viewpoint. Seen already in the Weimar Republic's sexual license

“Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture.”

It sounds like a plea for ecological awareness, right? Wrong. He seems to be saying instead that a preoccupation with trees shows a deficit in the culture. The environmental movement, the glorification of the “natural,” has dangerous moral implications. It suggests we ought to act on pure impulse, like animals. Animals kill and eat one another. The Nazis were great environmentalists.

“Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder”

Why would he want the Berlin Wall? The point is the clear distinction between good and evil, Stalin and St. Paul, the free world and the evil empire. It is an image of choosing sides. It is vital to preserve the distinction between right and wrong, or murder breaks loose.

Cohen betrays on which side of the Berlin Wall he stands, with Stalin or with St. Paul, with the phrase “I’ve seen the future.” It was famously applied to the early Soviet Union, by Lincoln Steffens in 1919: “I’ve seen the future, and it works.” Cohen clearly differs: it is murder.

"Won’t be nothing… you can measure any more.
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul"

This is the essence of the problem: the order of the soul has been overturned. The blizzard is an image of disorder. There is nothing we can measure any more, when we dispense with truth or right and wrong. These are the measures of all things.

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bibl

Getting explicit, surely; we have lost touch with the Bible and our Judeo-Christian roots.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing

Isn't this a remarkably clear image of what is happening now? Nothing in your past is private any longer; anything can be dug up with a Google search. And has been, on anyone targeted for political reasons. We see news photos of "white" people kneeling before "blacks." We see black-clad phantoms setting fires in the streets.


Was this visionary, or was it all so predictable?

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder

This is not the only or the first time Cohen has sung against abortion. He seemed to see it, as I do, as a key issue.

When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

And this, improbable and difficult as it seems, is the only solution: repentance. Cohen repeats the chorus relentlessly.

Cohen did; but can we hope for this for the world as a whole?

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Grinning Mary

My parish priest said something shocking in his sermon today: “If you do not have joy, you do not have Jesus in you.”

There is of course cause for joy in the Christian life. Things turn out well in the end. But this statement is directly against the gospel. Jesus says, instead, “blessed are those who mourn.”

The priest cited Mary as our model here: how she greeted joyfully the news of her pregnancy.

There is no trace of this in the actual gospel; only submission: “behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

The obvious likelihood is that the news was shocking and terrifying. Being pregnant without a husband was punishable by being stoned to death. This is important for understanding Mary as a moral model. Being moral is not supposed to be the easy, carefree option.

Yeats captured the enormity of it:

The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Mary is revered as Mater Dolorosa—Our Lady of Sorrows.

Then the priest cited St. Paul as his authority. But Saint Paul was not so big on joy either. He said we must all, like him, “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

It was striking to me, on a trip to Bulgaria and Greece, to walk through museums and compare the pagan Greek art to the early Christian icons. The pagan figures generally grinned with vacant eyes; familiar to art historians as “the archaic smile.” the Christian saints always looked deeply sorrowful.

The archaic smile, shown on a sphinx

The archaic smile, shown on a dying soldier.

The core message is the need for repentance.

I fear this priest has been infected by the same “I’m OK, you’re OK” theology as the Christmas song “At This Table.”