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.

On the Morality of Murder

 

Chatting with a relativist the other day, he asked, “Do you think the killer of Charlie Kirk believed he was doing something wrong?” 

His intended point, of course, was that the killer no doubt thought he was doing a good thing. 

I have heard this argument from relativists before. A religion professor back in grad school actually wrote a piece for the student newspaper arguing that morality was nonsense. After all, if we thought something was wrong, we would not do it in the first place, would we? The fact that anyone did anything proves it was not wrong. They were simply following their own moral lights.

Another relativist friend, himself ethnically Jewish, held that Hitler no doubt thought he was doing the right thing.

Of course the Kirk killer knew he was doing something wrong. Of course Hitler did. Everyone has a conscience, an internal moral compass, and although we can rationalize, we know the moral truth. Those who do wrong will be plagued by their conscience, by the Erinyes, by their instinct for justice.

This is why, for example, serial killers always lay clues, growing more and more reckless until they are caught; and show relief when they are caught. Law enforcement sources say they usually sleep like a baby that first night in detention. Their conscience is no longer plaguing them—at least at the same level. Dostoyevsky understood this well, and had Raskolnikov’s own conscience lead him to Siberia. Edgar Allen Poe understood this in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

This is why villainous people, like Stalin, like Hitler, or like those on Death Row, descend into paranoia. While they may have objective reason to fear retribution, it is also their conscience being projected on the world. This is why bad people commonly hate those they have harmed.

To suppose we always do what we believe is right is to suppose there are no impulses tempting us to do wrong. That there is no such thing as self-interest, cupidity, intemperance, or ego. Or rather, I suspect, in most such cases, that there is no force nor consideration the theorist will answer to but cupidity, self-interest, intemperance, and ego.

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.

Remember the Good Old Days?

 

Does anyone remember when pedophilia was supposed to be a crisis only among the Catholic clergy? Any priest was suspect, and the church itself was blamed and fined crippling amounts. All paid ultimately by innocent parishioners. Many churches had to be shut down and sold off. Not to mention church-run orphanages and residential schools.

It was always obvious that this was scapegoating. Nobody was looking for pedophilia anywhere else.

We now know it was also projection. We find increasingly that pedophilia is common in the public schools, in sports teams, in clubs, in Hollywood. We learn that huge numbers of children go missing every year. That there are vast pedophile rings involving the rich and famous. That child sex trafficking is a big business.

And now that it cannot be blamed on the Catholic Church, the chattering classes seem unready to condemn it. Instead, films about the problem are suppressed; client lists are suppressed; child grooming is fairly openly promoted with pornographic books in school libraries and drag queen story hours. And those who object are condemned as bigots.

Does nobody see what is going on here?

The Catholic Church was and is targeted because it is a voice for protecting the children: from abortion, from immorality, from neglect, from abuse, from exploitation. 

Rules and morals protect the weak and vulnerable. The strong and malicious are always against them.

Inductive and Deductive

 

Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.

Friend Xerxes, as a gentleman of the left, may have put his finger on why our society is falling apart. He heralds the supposed good news that science has recently discredited the whole idea of “top-down” reasoning—that is, deduction. Without giving details, he thinks this is because of what quantum physics posits about subatomic particles. Actually, I think he has this backwards: quantum physics actually discredits the usual scientific “bottom-up” approach. Which means, drawing general conclusions from observation. Quamtum physics argues that observation does not work at this level.

Science has always been “bottom up”—that is, inductive. Philosophy, religion and mathematics are deductive, working from first principles down to the specific. Xerxes prefers science, apparently. I gather everyone on the left does. Math is racist, after all. 

One problem with inductive reasoning is that it can never arrive at truth. It can only draw provisional conclusions, which may be disproven in the next moment by some “black swan” event.

Another problem is that it cannot arrive at any concept of value, of what is good or bad. It cannot distinguish between right and wrong. 

This makes it a useful tool, but a terrible master.

And our modernist culture has elevated it to our religion.

No wonder, then, that we begin to doubt, with the postmodernists, whether there is any reality at all underlying mere opinion. No wonder there is a crisis of meaninglessness leading to drug addiction, mental illness, suicide, and despair. No wonder that we object to conventional morality and to being “judgemental,” and social morals are collapsing. No wonder modern psychiatry is left to define sanity as merely thinking the same way as everyone ese, making dissent madness—an obvious logical fallacy, but they have nowhere else to go for any standard of truth or right.

Xerxes has decided that because it is “top down,” moving from the general to the particular, deduction supports and leads to authoritarianism. He heralds accordingly the supposedly new inductive approach as leading to a new age of human liberation.

Yay. Now men can become women and if math is hard, you ignore it.

But this, that deductive reason leads to authoritarianism, is demonstrably the opposite of the truth. When you remove judgement, there is no way to peacefully resolve disagreements. Bullying and force are all there is. No wonder then that so much of modern thought, from feminism to intersectionality, is about “power relationships” and “power imbalances’ and power. Whoever has power simply uses it to impose their will and their interests; and that is taken as a given.

There is no way, then, of course, to end power imbalances. All you can do is put another group in power. Everyone fights to the death for the crest of the hill. And in the long run everyone loses and dies.

Those political philosophies that have built on an inductive, “scientific” approach have been the most authoritarian in history: Fascism, Nazism, and Marxism. Deductive regimes, even at the most authoritarian, like Iran, Spain under the Inquisition, or Saudi Arabia, are mild by comparison.

Liberal democratic principles, on the other hand, are entirely deductive. This is clearly expressed in the US Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….”

The idolatry of science has our tail spinning into havoc and madness. Xerxes, unknowingly, suggests why.

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.”

Nun of the Above

 

Friend Maximus sends in a piece from the CBC, an interview with a nun picked by the Vatican to attend the upcoming synod in Rome.

The most telling thing she says is this: “We humans tend to create these dualisms all the time, don't we? Good, bad, black, white, Catholic, non-Catholic. We always create dualisms and we did it with sexuality and gender. Male, female.”

Notice the very first “dualism” she cites as human-made and troublesome is good and bad: good and evil. 

There could be no flag of a brighter crimson. She rejects good and evil. She rejects the very concept of sin. She rejects the narrative of the Bible from its first verses, in which God separates the light from the darkness, and order from chaos. The battle against sin is the entire mission of the Church, the reason for human existence, and the reason Christ incarnated and died for us. Making binary choices was the reason Adam and Eve were created. This woman who intends to legislate for believers rejects it all.

Binaries are beautiful. Duality is beautiful. Without binaries, there is no balance, and so no art. Without binaries, male and female, self and other, there can be no love. And without binaries there can be no reason, no sense nor meaning to the world. This is Aristotle’s Law of non-contradiction: a thing is either so or not so.

Rejecting the binaries is Satanic. This Catholic nun is a Satanist. As is anyone who seeks ambiguity and lack of clarity. Jesus by contrast, is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, b which we see things clearly, and see our path clearly.

She also, of course, rejects science, in rejecting the male-female binary, visible in every cell. 

Of course, her reasoning is also contradictory on many levels. For example, if dualism i bad, then she is wrong to object to it, since that creates an exclusionary, non-inclusive duality between dualism and non-dualism, with dualism bad and non-dualism good. For another example, if there is no male-female binary, how can it be a problem that there are not enough female voices in the church?

Why on earth or in hell would anyone want to throw out Christianity, the Bible, science, art, love, and reason itself? Because—I can see no other reason—these are impediments to raw self-will, and the will to power. Any law or restriction protects the weak against the strong.

She wants to be God.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bad Parenting and Unconditional Love

 

Huckleberry Finn and father.

A model essay in a current school text outlines the two styles of parenting, strict and lenient, with their pros and cons. This seems to be the universal issue, at least since my own childhood and Doctor Benjamin Spock. And the politically correct position is that parents should be lenient. Indeed, spank your child, and you risk losing them to the government.

 This utterly misses the point. I think deliberately; I suspect another of many attempts to avoid all moral questions. Being strict or lenient is a secondary consideration. The obviously more important question is what the rules are, whether they are clear, and whether they are enforced consistently.

I suspect the term “lenient” is being used as a euphemism. It should mean not exacting punishment, or not exacting severe punishment. Instead, I think it now means not having any rules.

The Catholic Church, for example, is a model of lenience. It never exacts any punishment for sin. All that is needed is admission of guilt, and the matter is not mentioned again. Home free. Yet it is commonly condemned as strict.

In other words, “strict” means simply recognizing a difference between right and wrong.

Children need clear direction from their parents. Childhood is their time to learn. They suffer terribly without it. Moral ambiguity is the great danger, and the worst possible form of child abuse. 

If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

If a parent is strict, that is no big problem for a child: they simply do not do the prohibited thing. If a parent is lenient, that’s fine too, so long as the rules are clear. Children naturally want to please their parents, often above all else. But if a parent does not tell you what they want, is unpredictable, erratic, unjust, or encourages things against your conscience, there is an insurmountable problem. You cannot avoid trouble. 

I suspect this very form of abuse is the root of most of what we call mental illness. 

Which is of course growing now by leaps and bounds.

What'sHerFace Gets In Yer Face

 

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said somebody. The original source of the well-known quotation is uncertain. 

In 1836, John Wilkinson wrote:

“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist: another, perhaps equally fatal, is to make them fancy that he is obliged to stand quietly by, and not to meddle with them, if they get into true silence.”

In 1856, William Ramsey wrote:

“One of the most striking proofs of the personal existence of Satan, which our times afford us, is found in the fact, that he has so influenced the minds of multitudes in reference to his existence and doings, as to make them believe that he does not exist; and that the hosts of Demons or Evil Spirits, over whom Satan presides as Prince, are only the phantasies of the brain, some hallucination of mind. Could we have a stronger proof of the existence of a mind so mighty as to produce such results?”

Baudelaire said something similar. The first quotation is usually attributed to him.

It is so true and evident that it has occurred to many minds. Most people will adamantly deny the existence of evil, on the apparent premise—a classic example of denial--that if they ignore the Devil, he will ignore them. Examples abound: the silly notion of “rape culture,” that some men rape women because they do not know better, and need the matter explained to them. The idiotic pacifist idea that any conflict springs from some “misunderstanding,” and war can be averted by negotiation and compromise. That if there is a conflict, the victim must be in part to blame. That anyone who does something unquestionably immoral, like taking a gun and shooting up a school, must be insane rather than evil. Or it must be the gun’s fault. Or it must be society’s fault, or the system’s fault, or religion’s fault, or capitalism’s fault.

And in What’sHerFace’s talk, it manifests as the idea that we who fight for liberty and fairness ought to and can strive for unity in the present political circumstance. And should avoid offending. Peace is not possible; there is no chance of compromise between good and evil. It only ends in Munich, betrayal, and unilateral disarmament. 

We cannot honestly pretend that men can decide to be women.

We cannot honestly agree that “white” people are inherently evil.

We cannot honourably or safely compromise on free speech.

People like Scott Adams are waking up to this, it seems.