Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A True Story

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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. 

Sin vs. Guilt

 

Let me rant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

General assent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is an effort to excuse sin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erika Kirk Is Wrong

 

Erika Kirk’s speech publicly forgiving the murderer of her husband turned my stomach. It was the height of pharisaism. If she meant it, will she be asking that all charges be dropped? The words cost her nothing; they were virtue signalling. “Look how holy I am.” A Pharisee praying loudly in the temple. To me, whispering the words “that young man,” she reeked of insincerity.

Worse, she is being congratulated for it all over the right-wing blogosphere. This discredits Christianity and encourages more murders. We are learning who the phonies are, the poseurs. There are a lot of them.

To his immortal credit, Trump alone was not going along with this. This is why we need him: he always calls out the B.S. He called Kirk out in the gentlest, most self-deprecating way. He stated he could not forgive his enemies; “so I guess Charlie hates me.” He was not about to make a show of fake piety. And it is ironic, because Trump has a long public record of forgiving those who had previously been his enemies. Notably, at this very event, Elon Musk. He personifies the true Christian virtue. He forgives instantly.

Christians are to forgive others their trespasses only if they repent and seek forgiveness. Otherwise, you are endorsing sin. It is not noble to say it was okay to kill your husband; it is a betrayal of him. It is also a betrayal of God, for it is a denial of God’s law. And it is as bad as cursing the sinner to hell.

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

Jesus does not condemn the woman taken in adultery: but only once she has stood there ready to accept her punishment, and only with the admonition, “go and sin no more.” Forgiveness is the proper response to repentance, not to sin.

Mrs. Kirk cited Jesus’s words on the cross: “forgive them, father, for they know not what they do.”

Note the qualification: they are forgiven because they do not know what they are doing. Otherwise they are not forgiven. Does anyone want to argue that the killer of Charlie Kirk did not know what he was doing?

The reference is to the Roman soldiers crucifying him, and casting lots for his clothes. They are just doing their job; they cannot know they are crucifying an innocent man, let alone God himself.

If Mrs. Kirk were a true and sincere Christian, she should have read and pondered her Bible better than this. Or failing that, she should, as a sincere person, have listened to the voice of her conscience, and known in her heart that what she said was not right.

It is sad that even at this moment of apparent revival, Satan was already present, and speaking from the podium.

A Christmas Message

 

The nicest Christmas card I received this year was from a Jewish friend. An animated ecard of Salisbury Cathedral, a children’s choir singing “O Holy Night.” 

This does not surprise me. In my experience, all religious acrimony is between the religious and the non-religious or the phony religious, never among the religious. The religious always share more than what separates them—I would say infinitely more, for it is the experience of the infinite. Among us, we know. In Saudi Arabia, I could anticipate any student or faculty member with a good beard would be a friend—as a devout Muslim. The clean-shaven were always more likely to be hostile towards me, as a Westerner and a Christian. My own Catholic faith has been deeply enriched, along the way, by Jews like Leonard Cohen and Martin Buber, Hindus like Ramakrishna or the Bhagavata Purana, Protestants like William Blake and William Lane Craig. I have far more in common with a devout Jew than a secular Christian.

Artists are the same. True artists recognize a fellowship far more significant than any political, philosophical, or aesthetic differences. They have all felt the thumb of God, to use Margaret Atwood’s image, pressing down on their head, and this makes them brothers and sisters. You don’t fight with family; Father would not be pleased.

I find ecumenism is therefore a good test against Pharisaism. If a Christian runs down Judaism, or vice versa, a Catholic Protestantism, or vice versa, a Buddhist Christianity, and so forth, you know they are not genuine about their own religion. They are just using it as a mask; wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Serious artists similarly do not run down aesthetic schools other than their own. Fans or critics may mock country music, or jazz, or bubblegum, or whatever. But serious musicians do not; music is music. We rock snobs used to condemn the Monkees as phonies; but not Jerry Garcia, say, or Frank Zappa. We used to condemn Tin Pan Alley; but not Robbie Robertson, Paul Simon, or Keith Richards. We used to condemn Lawrence Welk. But among his buddies were many great jazz musicians.

This is not indifferentism. All the great religions are essentially true, not equally true. Often apparent disagreement is only a matter of terminology or emphasis. Yet when it is real, one must be right and the others wrong. But that mistake is far less important than being a good Muslim, if Muslim, or a good Jew, if Jewish.

Similarly, not all artistic styles and forms are equally difficult or equally beautiful. Photography is a lesser calling than oil painting. Musicianship is a lesser art than composing. Hip hop is less sophisticated than jazz. But that is secondary to doing a fine job at whatever medium and genre you are working in.

Nor is a serious artist eager to condemn another for bad art, if their heart is in the right place. Any true artist also knows the inspiration comes not from them, but from elsewhere; there but for the grace of God… 

And the same for the religious. In the words of Goethe, “Man is doomed to err, so long as he is striving.” It is in the striving; it is where the heart is.

Hell's Bells and Preaching to the Choir

 

Friend Xerxes laments, in a recent column, that churches are “echo chambers.”

“In most churches, you hear what you expect to hear. It’s easy, even expected, to talk about God as unconditional love.”

“But I wonder,” he continues. “how much unconditional love the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the floods resulting from Hurricane Ida, are feeling.”

Xerxes is making the same point I have made here before: the superficiality and insensitivity of the “Hallelujah chorus” sort of Christianity, that pervades mainstream Protestantism and much of current Catholicism. This is a fallen world. If we are happy in it, there is something wrong.

Xerxes uses the analogy of a temple bell, played only inside the temple. 

The local topography allowing, Buddhist temples are built on hills—so that the sound of the bell is heard from far away. The idea is the opposite of an echo chamber: the idea is to draw you out of your day-to-day way of thinking, to something beyond. And note the core concept of Buddhism is “enlightenment”: that whatever you now think is wrong. You are living in darkness. You must see everything from a new perspective.

The same is true for temples of all sorts. The Greeks built their temples on the acropolis, the “higher city,“ overlooking the agora far below. You leave the marketplace, to find a new perspective.

A high point, if available, is preferred as well for Christian churches. Mount Athos; Monta Cassino; Mont St. Michel. The church in which I was baptized is on a cliff overlooking the harbor; so is St. Brendan’s in nearby Rockport. Regardless of location, the bells are in the high steeple, so that they can be heard from the greatest distance. They would be unpleasantly loud in the nave, and serve no purpose. 

As with Buddhism, the New Testament insistently tells us we must take a new perspective, not go on with our lives. One must enter by the narrow gate. Many are called, but few are chosen. The wisdom of the world is folly in Christ. “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

Religion is meant to be the utter opposite of an echo chamber. It is to draw us away from the echoes and the groupthink, the mass delusions and the madness of crowds. If it has become a matter of merely affirming the world as it is, and the congregation in what they already suppose, it is no longer a religion. It is an anti-religion, marching participants down the primrose path to hell.

This is the criticism often levelled against “mainstream Protestantism.” Pierre Berton wrote on the theme in “The Comfortable Pew.” Much of Catholicism has the disease; I’d say most. This is why, periodically, we have religious revivals.

I’d say we’re overdue for another.

New Life Gives Rise to Mercy.

Pope Francis sent this tweet just before Christmas:

It crystallizes something for me. Not in a happy way. As far as I can tell, it is meaningless. Just a selection of warm fuzzy words: “Happy Happy Joy Joy.” “Mercy,” “Hope,” “Joy,” “New Life.” Why not “joy gives rise to mercy”? Why not “mercy gives rise to peace”? “Peace gives rise to love”? “Love gives rise to new life”?

It smacks to me of words mattering more than their meanings. Just say the right words, and do what you like.

What I love most about Catholicism, stretching back to Pope Paul on abortion, more so with JPII, Benedict, and the new catechism, is the moral clarity. This is what we need. We do not need to feel good about ourselves. We need the truth. Otherwise, the Pharisees were all we ever needed. That disturbing business about the crucifixion is best forgotten. Too upsetting.

I accept that Francis’s emphasis is on the pastoral. Fine. But it must not be at the expense of clarity. His job is guidance. His insistence on “creative ambiguity” in the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia seems of a piece with this. I see no value to anyone in this sort of thing.

If there were, it seems to me that Hallmark Cards have it covered.

Is Jack Layton Doomed to Hell?

When you read in the depths of the Gospels of Jesus and the apostles being criticized for healing someone on the Sabbath, or for eating grains they pick in the field while wandering on the Sabbath, or for not washing hands before a meal, and so on, doesn't it all remind you of something?

Isn't this an apt description of life today in what Margaret Thatcher called the “nanny state”? The endless regulation of our daily lifes, laws that lose sight of the spirit of the thing, laws that require all parents to leave the maternity hospital with a car seat, whether or not they have a car, or ban church bake sales because the pies were made in unsupervised conditions...?

Hardly a coincidence. The word the King James translates “scribes” would be more correctly rendered into modern English as “bureaucrats.” That is exactly what scribes were in their day. The gospels should be read with this in mind; and, with this in mind, they can be clearly understood as a condemnation of intrusive government. The very first words preached in the New Testament are John the Baptist's “Brood of vipers, who warned you to fly from the retribution that is coming?”--spoken to the Sadducees and Pharisees.

“Pharisees” is a bit harder to place in modern context. Strictly speaking, they were a religious sect, and represent a certain tendency within religious leadership. However, their chief characteristic, as the Gospel sees it, is their insistence on adherence to a set of rules and regulations more strict than the Mosaic code--”walls around Torah.” We might render them, generically, “regulators.” But they were also a political grouping: the Pharisees, according to Josephus, tended to be the “party of the poor,” while the Sadducees with whom they were locked in an eternal political struggle tended to serve those with aristocratic, priestly, lineage. And so, they could be referred to also as “the left,” in first-century Judean terms.

Let's try the experiment of upgrading the references to modern terminology, and see how that sounds: Matthew 23 (ASV):


13 But woe unto you, bureaucrats, regulators, and leftists, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces, neither going in yourselves nor allowing others to go in who want to.

14 Woe unto you, bureaucrats, regulators, leftists, hypocrites! for you devour widows' houses, even while for a pretence you make long prayers: therefore you shall receive greater condemnation.

15 Woe unto you, bureaucrats, regulators, leftists, hypocrites! You who travel over sea and land to make a single person “educated,” and when you have him you make him twice as fit for hell as you are.

23 Woe unto you, bureaucrats, regulators, leftists, hypocrites! You mind your taxes and regulations carefully, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and good faith: but these you should have done, without neglecting the other.

24 You blind guides, who strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!
...
29 Woe unto you, bureaucrats, regulators, leftists, hypocrites! For you build the sepulchres of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of holy men, and say, If we had been there in the days of our fathers, we should not have joined in shedding the blood of the Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, or the evils of Jim Crow laws. 31 Here you witness to yourselves, that you are sons of them that committed the holocaust, and who segregated. 32 You finish off the work that your predecessors began. 33 Serpents! Brood of vipers! How shall ye escape being condemned to hell?


His words against the scribes and Pharisees are far and away the sternest words Jesus speaks about anyone. Though he does not like the Sadducees either, the Pharisees and scribes are clearly the great villains of slavation history. He more or less explicitly condemns them to hell in advance, without any hint of a chance for redemption.


Sounds right to me. Notice that Hitler's strongest support came from the universities and the ranks of the bureaucracy.

The great problem with bureaucrats, regulators, and leftists, is that they invert all values: by presenting a false appearance of righteousness and compassion, they lead people astray not just physically or politically, but morally. They destroy not just the body, but the soul. The Sadducees or the Roman occupiers, being openly in favour of a powerful elite, are less deceitful, and so less to be condemned.

If You Meet the Holy Father on the Road, Kill Him

Kathy Shaidle is right only about 50% of the time, in my books; but even when she is wrong she is insightful. Often, like most great writers, she makes me pound my fist on the table in sudden recognition, hissing “Yes!” under my breath. In her blog yesterday, she mentions how she hates the sort of Catholic who says "Our Blessed Mother" and "The Holy Father" instead of "Mary" and "the Pope.” Haven't I always thought the same? That kind of “more reverent-than-thou” language offends me too. They always do things “in a special way.” They always wear their miraculous medal in full view. Their saints are made of plaster or alabaster instead of meat and blood—they consider it blasphemy to allow that this or that saint, or pope, or even priest, was ever wrong or ever sinned.

These are, plainly, the sort of people to whom the outward appearance of piety is more important than the reality.

They are, in a word, Pharisees.

Pharisaism is a central problem not just for all religions, but for all professions; false piety is always the first refuge of a scoundrel, and false wisdom of a fool. The worst thing about it is not that it can cause me that urge to regurgitate, or render so much of the content of a typical religious bookshop, say, unreadable; but that it can drive sincere and naturally pious people away from religion.

The good news is that Christianity is at least far more aware of the problem than most of the world's institutions. It is almost the first point made in the New Testament.