Fire and Ice

 

Current and recent events make it clear that there really are two kinds of people in the world. It’s not just some cliché. And they are living in two different realities. Their views are so incompatible that it seems they must come to blows.

The first group believes in good and evil, and understands the point of life to be, largely, to do good and avoid evil.

The second group believes in no good but to do and get what they want. Evil is interfering with them in the pursuit of their desires, or criticizing them.

Understand this distinction, and much that is happening now in the news becomes clear. We are in a great battle of good and evil, and what one side calls good, the other calls evil.

It immediately strikes me that this dichotomy is expressed well by the Gospel’s division of mankind into sheep and goats. If you have ever had acquaintance with both sheep and goats, you will see it. Sheep automatically follow “the rules”—keep in mind that the shepherd referred to in the analogy is God, not some political or social movement, and not government. What is meant by the allegory is not social conformity. In dramatic contrast to sheep, although they look similar, goats do and eat whatever they want. You cannot tell a goat what to do.

The difference is also so distinct that it is remarkably easy to classify people as one or the other. This justifies the gospel’s firm division: sheep go to heaven, and goats go to hell, with no parole and no appeal.

Consider Erin O’Toole’s recent editorial concerned with the tone of politics. He objected to all the flags reading “F*** Trudeau.” 

He made no reference to any possible acts of Trudeau that might have prompted such strong emotions.

In other words, O’Toole did not care about acts that might have done harm to others; only being called out for them. The only sin is admitting sin exists. The only sin is judgement.

Pope Francis is also a goat. This is revealed by his recent profanity-filled demand to seminarians that they always give absolution. The problem is not the sin; it is acknowledging sin as something real and important. The only sin is judgement.

The recent "defund the police" drive was of a piece. Insane as it must appear to sheep, the premise was that the problem was not crime, but prosecuting it.

Although, ironically, the goats accuse the sheep of intolerance, the reverse is true. Sheep are constitutionally mild creatures. The sheep will go a long way in tolerating or ignoring the actions of others. But the goats cannot tolerate even a word wrong, or even silence. Ask St. Thomas More. They are therefore especially concerned with “hate speech.”

For example, abortion is free and legal. Protesting abortion, within a certain distance of an abortion clinic, is illegal. 

Apparently even praying silently in the vicinity of an abortion clinic is now illegal; if they can infer what you are praying about.

For example, Benedict or John Paul II, sheep, were reasonably content allowing either the Latin or the Novus Ordo mass to be said. Both were apparently softies when it came to dealing with Vatican corruption. Francis, by contrast, a goat, is eager to crack heads—the heads of those who complain about Vatican corruption. And he is adamant, for no visible reason but promoting disrespect for something holy, that the Latin mass must not be said. 

While the sheep are happy enough to say that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, and to tolerate homosexual sex or sex outside marriage for others, for the sake of social peace and Christian charity, the goats insist that one must publicly agree that homosexual sex or transsexualism is morally good, and wear an advertisement for homosexual pride in public, or be fined, boycotted, or lose your livelihood. 

The sheep are prepared to forgive any sin with repentance. The goats will hunt down old private tweets from years before, or ancient testimony of drunken sophomore parties, to prove supposed “hypocrisy” in anyone who dares profess the unalterable nature of right and wrong.

This is why, in times when the goats gain dominance, it seems that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Sheep are more tolerant and easygoing.

A recent column by regrettably goatish pal Xerxes opines that political positions ought to be judged on what emotions they appeal to: do they appeal to hate or anger? If so, they must be rejected.

So it is okay to do what you want to others, so long as you say the right things. The important thing is that the victims must never be angry about it, or accuse anyone of anything. 

A respondent to Xerxes sharpened the point: political speech must above all not appeal to guilt. 

“[T]hey attempt to make you feel guilty. The sad faces, woeful looks, desperate conditions depicted help us to feel guilty of not caring, not being willing to help, not participating… and can become powerful influencers/manipulators to open our wallets.”

“Making me feel guilty elicits a deletion in my world.”

For the goats, guilt is, in the end, the only evil. That is, their actual enemy is their conscience. And the worse their conscience troubles them, the more extreme their intolerance will become. They will begin smashing icons. They will begin burning churches. And there is nothing the sheep can do, by their own behaviour, to prevent or to moderate this. It is perhaps best for the sheep to realize this. You might as well speak out.

Officially, the Nazi genocide against the Jews was on racial grounds. However, the Nazis were largely influenced by Nietzsche. It seems likely that much of their real, if unstated, motive was that they blamed the Jews for spreading “slave morality” in German and world culture: in other words, the demand to “do unto others” and the Ten Commandments. Morality, in short. How dare they?

To Nazis, the great enemy, according to Himmler, was “pity.” Pity was weakness in the evolutionary struggle. For “pity,” one might as well read the prime Christian virtue of charity, caritas.

In ancient times, this battle of sheep and goats corresponded pretty well with the distinction between polytheists and ethical monotheists. This is why paganism has generally been able to be tolerant of other paganisms, and monotheisms of other monotheisms, but neither has been historically tolerant of the other tendency. They are like fire and ice.

We are in a time of global struggle today, it is a struggle between good and evil, and the battle lines are remarkably clear.