Truth is Reality

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEZc2kHG6Us&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR28esOf5UDUK6IKSV-_BsY9n2uwOFk_b3EeFwO9de2aqujNvUSqrpfY2n8

Today I have a very simple sermon to offer you, and not a long sermon. It’s a conceptual sermon—about a concept, not about some kind of event, not about one book of the Bible, not even about a particular doctrine like the deity of Christ or salvation by faith. I just want, with you, for about ten minutes, to take a look at one idea, one concept, okay? It’s the concept of Truth. 

Truth. What is it?

I quickly marked down for myself twelve places (in Scripture).

(Why twelve? It reminds me of how, probably 25 years ago, Vladimir Ivanovich asked my why there were twelve tenses of verbs in English. I told him, “Well, Vova, it’s obviously because there were twelve apostles.” Somehow he didn’t believe me.)

And so, twelve places from sacred scripture. And about each one of them I’m literally going to say a few words.

And so the first place is Psalm 119:142:

Your righteousness is everlasting
    and your law is true.

It will be a good, interesting exercise some time, when you read sacred scripture, to, every time that you encounter the word “truth”, substitute that word with the word “reality.” And take a look at how the verse speaks to you, what it suggests to you, when you take the verse that way.

Because “truth” is nothing less than reality itself.  The order of things. It’s everything the way it is.

The Lord has invited us into reality, into authentic life, through Jesus Christ. He has invited back into the order of things, the way God established it. 

We have returned to reality in Jesus Christ.

And so “Your law”, which the psalmist refers to, is nothing less than this reality.

God’s law doesn’t contradict the authentic order of things. On the contrary, it affirms it, asserts it.

And we want to live in correspondence to reality, don’t we! Because in reality there is health, there is peace, “shalom”, there is flourishing. That’s what the Lord has invited us into. Into reality.

Further in connection with this truth, Romans 1:18 gives us the diagnosis of sin. Where Paul writes:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness

So let’s try our experiment again, substituting the word “truth” with the word “reality.”

By sin, by unrighteousness, they suppress reality. They renounce the actual order of things.  And of course the outcome of this is death. Because we can’t live, we can’t flourish, in the sphere of unreality and self-deception.

John 18: 37. (I promised I would be going through these verses quite quickly!)  This is the kind of passage that comes back to me all the time in life, to my memory.

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Jesus came to bear witness to reality, to reveal it, to open up to the hearts of people what really is, and to bring us back to real life, the kind that God created it to be.

The one who belongs to the truth, to reality, will come to know the very King of all reality.

And in John 8:32:

And you will know the truth (reality, you will know everything like it is), and the truth will set you free.

That is, we will be coming into the knowledge of, and entering into, our authentic appointment, what we were created for. We will be realizing ourselves. It’s not an accident that the words “reality” and “realize” sound so similar. To be realized is to live in correspondence with reality.

And this is a process. It isn’t right away, it doesn’t all come about in a second, in one moment. It’s a process that requires a whole life.

And what’s the source of this process, the driving power of this realization? Where do we get the strength from to travel this path? The Lord tells us in the Gospel of John 16:13.

But when he, the Spirit of truth (the Spirit of reality, the Spirit of the living God, the Spirit of our true Creator and Maker, Who created everything, Who established the divine order of things, what that Spirit) comes, he will guide you into all the truth. (He will show everything the way it is, so you can live in accordance to it). He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

Now, do I understand all this? How it works? No. Do I believe it? 100%. 100%. And in the next chapter, 17:17, the Lord prays, he asks of His Father:

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

Sanctify them by reality!

You see, we’re not just talking about some kind of religious truth. A lot of people take the word “truth” that way: “Well, there’s your religious truth, and the Buddhists have their religious truth,” as if we’re only talking about opinions, about views, or very simply about beautiful poetic ideas.

Nothing of the sort. We’re talking about everything the way it is. And that reality actually sanctifies us when we are in vital connection with it. In other words, when we more and more belong to Him, we more and more resemble Him, specifically Christ—we are talking about Christlikeness!

This is only reinforced by what we read in John 1:14. Who is this we resemble more and more when our lives are in harmony with the reality of God?

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

There it is: the source. In the flesh.  Our entire orientation and structure of reality.  Fixing our gaze upon Him, we are oriented to the way everything really is, to what everything really is, for better or for worse. Much as C.S. Lewis once said, i.e., that he believed in Christ much as he believed in the rising of the sun: not only because he could see it but that by it he could see everything else.

That’s how we press on to the fulfillment of our own God-given appointment in life, our purpose and fulfillment. Because it dwells in Him. It springs from His all-encompassing glory….

And we saw His glory, as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father.

He’s full of truth, faithfulness, trustworthiness. He will never deceive you; He will never let you down. Your life can never be worse in connection with the all-encompassing reality revealed in the glory of Christ.

Which demands of us…what? In response?

2 Timothy 2:15

Make every effort…

Which demands what?

Make every effort!

Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth accurately.

This is our responsibility, and it doesn’t refer simply to preaching. By our life we teach the truth, we bear witness, we show everybody around us what reality really is, where to turn to, how to orient, why to live at all—that’s our responsibility; it’s a life of worship in the closest relationship with the living God.

This “worship” is not only within the boundaries of these walls but in life itself.

Our Lord talks about this in the Gospel of John (again!; John talks a lot about this!), 4:24.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

They worship in reality, genuinely! In other words, they are the real, spiritual worshippers.

Just picture it: genuine encounter with the living God—that’s what our risen, conquering Lord and Redeemer summons us to! What a privilege this is! What an honor! To genuinely know the living God, to have a relationship with Him, fellowship with Him—not like an illusion, not like a dream, not like a mere religious concept, but in reality. Inside, from the very heart.

And how is this gauged? What kind of test is there for all this? How do we check—are we living, are we growing, are we walking in this reality?

A good test is in the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians—1 Cor. 13, the chapter of love—from verse 4:

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious . Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. ⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. ⁶ It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.

Our heart, in love, naturally rejoices in God’s reality, whenever we see the manifestation, the genuine manifestation of God’s grace in the life of another, we naturally rejoice. Why? Because we recognize in this our beloved Savior—we see Christ shining through! In the manifestation of this real love! Our spirits leap in joy and say, “Oh, there You are!” And this affirms Who we belong to.

Two more places (Bible passages) are left.

Ephesians 4:15. Let’s begin with verse 14.

¹⁴ So we are no longer to be children (the subject here is maturity!), tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes. ¹⁵ But practicing the truth in love (see, here’s where these two concepts join together into one concept—true love, real, genuine love!; love that corresponds to the very character of God and reflects His reality)—but practicing the truth in love we will in all things grow up into the head, which is Christ.

Christ. Maturity.

Such a remarkable thing, in Christ—maturity.

The Lord God…never (I guarantee you, brothers and sisters, that our loving Lord God) never in life—never!--will suggest to you that you be delivered—delivered—from something that you actually need. It won’t happen. He’ll never suggest it to you! To be delivered, to be freed, from what you can’t live without, no—that’s never going to come from God.

“Practicing the truth,” you will “in all things grow up,” whatever it is you are required to toss, chuck, forsake, despair of, cut out and excise from your life on the way. The pain will be in perfect harmony with Reality, with the Truth Who loves you.

This is truth, this is the way of sanctification, this is the way of liberation from everything unneeded, everything pernicious, from everything false. No matter how it seems to you. You have to entrust yourself to Him. If He suggests, “Get rid of that, get free of that,” then do it. You’ve just got to. Because that’s what it means to really live. Anything else is unreal. Untrue.  

And the last verse, Psalm 43:3.

Send your light, the psalmist asks God, Send your light, (Light! This is vision! It’s understanding! It’s awakening, revival!) Send your light and your truth (Your reality!)
They (the light and truth) will lead me,
they will escort me back to your holy hill,
and to the place where you live.

“I am the Alpha and Omega,” says our God. He is the beginning and the conclusion. Everything starts with Him, and toward Him all is directed in our life. He encompasses our whole life. “Send light and truth,” let them lead me on, and lead me in! From start to finish. From the point of departure to the very…arrival, in His dwelling places, the forever home, where “I will prepare a place for you.”

Glory to God, that He has liberated us from deception, from the lie, and led us into the fellowship of His true, risen Son, Jesus Christ, the only real Life there is.

Amen.

OPINIONS

So a friend wrote to register a certain bewilderment at the way people can turn a cut-and-dry question like whether there's life on other planets into a sort of moral judgment, the defendant in the dock being God. The way people get to that bizarre place goes, my friend said, something like this: "inevitably an objection is raised that life has to exist somewhere; we can't be all there is; it makes no sense that God would create a limitless universe with earth being the only place with life. I find it interesting that such 'protests' imply that one planet with life is not justifiable. More life is needed in order to approve God's work. Does that make sense?" 

The short answer is, of course, no. It makes no sense at all. There isn't an ounce of logical coherence in it.

But here's what I wrote back, at slightly greater length. It led me into other things, perhaps you will not be surprised to hear....

(Additional thoughts that I'm inserting now will be in brackets. A line or two will be rearranged to make for more logical flow.) 
-----

"No, of course not. In fact, categorical assertion on things we categorically don't know are pretty unintelligent, to put it mildly. 
We don't know whether there's life out there, so assertions that there must be, or can't be, are perfectly hollow and meaningless [let alone advancing specious moral verdicts on the matter!]. There might be [and there might not be.... So?]. 
I always bring up this question in my hermeneutics class when I discuss argumentation and emotional reactions. 
Get a couple of guys in a bar, especially if they've had a few, and one says, 'There's gotta be life on other planets.' And the other says,'What are you talking about? You ever seen life on other planets? They ever contacted us? No. Means they're not there.' The first guy says, 'You calling me a liar?' The second snorts, 'You calling ME a liar?' And next thing they're at each other's throats.
And all because each one is ready to fight to the death in defence of his ignorance.
['Ignorance'...] Because neither one knows.
But both their egos are 100% invested in their opinions being unassailable.
Because it's not about whether there's life out there.
It's about their inner sense of place and correspondence to the real order of things, the actual configuration of reality.
'Cause if my opinion about life on other planets is wrong, then...waitaminnit, what else am I wrong about?
Maybe I'm...ALL wrong, about everything!
Which is why people irrationally get aggressive about the most inane things they don't objectively have either the least stake in or the least claim to authority on.
I compare it to a puzzle in our brains. Our internal schematic of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
The moment any piece of that puzzle is called into question, we go into self-defense mode.
'Cause the whole structure could fall apart.
That human dynamic is exacerbated exponentially by our opinion-drunk popular culture.
The unwritten law in America's marketplace of "ideas" (aka noise) goes 'Everybody has a right to an opinion...therefore you MUST have an opinion, and when you're asked about it you MUST tell it.'
'I don't know' is tantamount to heresy.
[As for me, I don't care,] I am a profound believer in and advocate for 'I don't know.' 
I remember when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke out.
There were opinion polls [!!!] on whether Bill and Monica did or didn't in the Oval Office.
Utterly moronic.

As if the opinion polls would decide it.

But that actually is virtually what the Commercial News Media have reduced the American mentality to: if the opinion polls say it happened, it happened.

But [in point of fact] if Bill and Monica didn't, and the opinion polls say they did, the opinion polls are simply wrong.

And if they did, and the opinion polls say they didn't, they're wrong again.

[So they are vapid and meaningless at best; while at worst they spawn the illusion of Reality Created Ex Nihilo by the omnipotent Opinion Poll, and a more pernicious force in human society I can hardly conceive of.]

I'd love to get one of those pollsters calling me with such an idiotic question.

I'd say, 'I don't know, so why on earth would I say I do, one way or another?'

'Yes sir, but what do you THINK?'

'I think...I don't know. No, I KNOW that I don't know. [So WHY do you want me to say I know something I DON'T know?]' 

'Yes sir, but you MUST have an opinion on the matter!'

'My opinion, with all due respect, Mr. Pollster, is that you're something between an idiot and a manipulative worm. Will that fit anywhere in your data?'

And, of course, investing the question of life on other planets with moral dimensions only compounds the idiocy.

'It would be just WRONG for us to be the only planet with life on it!'

Well, golly gee, I guess we'll have to commit planetary suicide to right the wrong, then, once we've verified the absence of life in the rest of the universe.

It's all useless blather, none of which is about the ostensible question.

People who talk that way are really consumed with something else.

They are conceptually trying to set themselves up as judge and jury over the order of Reality that offends them by having dared to exist without consulting them on the blueprints first.

'Wrong'...compared with WHAT? With the moral rectitude of a COMPLETELY lifeless universe?

['Wrong'...on whose part? 'Wrong' compared with what? With what you would have done? With what you would have done compared to...what? To the order of the universe you and I are almost entirely ignorant about anyway? So what on earth, really, are you TALKING about? It CAN'T really be the moral rectitude of a lifeless-except-Earth-universe; that is unfathomably beyond your capacity either to posit or morally weigh. So whatever's eating at you is...something else and much closer to home.] 

Sometimes we talk about "toothless" laws, laws that can never be enforced so are meaningless in any real-world sense and should never therefore have been passed to begin with.

They don't 'go anywhere.'

So much human arguing and quibbling and contending and protesting is 'toothless' in exactly that way.

I find 'I don't know' to be a magnificent antidote to that.

It's a delightful conversation-killer.

For those moments when a conversation is eminently deserving of the death penalty."

[And I'll add this: I noticed a recent headline where pollster Frank Lutz prognosticated that a Trump victory in 2020 will signal the death of the opinion poll industry, as it will conclusively unmask the industry as an incompetent fraud. Truly I say, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Industries come and go, as the icebox and corset makers know too well. The demise of the opinion poll's cultural dictatorship would signal a long overdue advance toward...maturity. 

And one more little thing, an anecdote I simply must share. Back when I was in college, I remember one day a young lady crowing almost defiantly (why, I hadn't the least idea) in my direction, "I believe in opinions! Everybody should have their own opinions! Without an opinion, you're nothing!" 

To which I replied, "Okay, great. My 'opinion' is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Who died a redeeming death on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day."

She did a moment's double-take, then (you couldn't make this up!) snipped dismissively, "Well, you're just opinionated."'

Hmm, apparently some opinions are more equal than others! 

As comically un-self-aware as that young lady was, her retort,  if you stop to take it apart, encapsulates both the insidious Cult of Opinion and its ominous pretensions to totalitarianism, pretensions coming all too clearly to the fore in today's Cancel Culture.]

Forgetting How to Remember and Remembering How to Forget

I wonder whether anyone else has wondered about this. 

Back in The World Before Internet, which I know is to many something like the Cretaceous Age, we often forgot things. 

And then labored to recall the missing information. 

You might be sitting around a dinner table with family, chatting about the movies, and somebody says, “Remember that movie with Peter Falk and the other guy...what was his name, I forget. You know, where Falk was a CIA man and the other guy was a dentist?” And somebody else at the table says, “Oh, yeah, I remember that! But, isn’t it terrible, the other actor’s name slips my mind too!” 

And everybody at the table racks their brains to summon up the actor’s name. 

More often than not, nobody would recall the name on the spot, but a half-hour later, just when somebody is sharing their secret ingredient to make the best pumpkin pie in the world, it hits somebody else: 

“And the very last thing you add to the pumpkin before it goes into the crust is—“

“Alan Arkin!” 

And everybody joins the chorus: “Aaaaaalan Aaaaarkin, oh yeeeeah!” 

But today the scenario goes: “Yeah, that movie with Peter Falk and the other guy—you know, where Falk was a CIA man and the other guy...what was his name...played a dentist?”

“Hold on. [Tap, tap, tap] Alan Arkin. The In-Laws.” 

Today’s scenario is far more efficient, of course. Nobody has to try and remember anymore. No more brain-racking. No sudden revelation in the middle of the pie recipe followed by the chorus of collective recognition. 

Nope, nobody has to try and remember anymore. Why, we practically don’t need to FORGET anymore. We’re skipping right PAST that inner “I forget” moment and cutting straight to “Info wanted. Google.” We’re typing even before we’ve asked ourselves whether we already know it. 

Which makes me wonder what the abandonment of brain-racking, even the abandonment of REMEMBERING, is likely to do to the human mind. How is the brain likely to change in a perpetual forget-and-remember-free environment? 

What will it turn us into? 

(Well, not me. I’m too old to stop forgetting and remembering. I’m hard-wired, thank God, to brain-rack, to scour the mental files.)

But what will this way of being make of minds and brains in coming generations likely to function on a core, hard-wired assumption that all necessary information is there at the tap-tap-tap of a keyboard—or indeed, just a mental call-out to the Net once the chips are implanted? What cognitive muscles will atrophy, finally blip out of existence, and what will that make of the Human Being? 

(A scary thing about that scenario: who is DECIDING what “all necessary information” is?)

When the day comes that everyone has forgotten how to remember, will anyone ever remember how to forget? 

Computers never forget. But humans do. 

Don’t they?

The Ascension, in ten minutes

 The Ascension—a ten-minute meditation

(Read Acts 1:4-11)

The Ascension of our Lord represents the ending of the ending and the beginning of the end.

I’ll explain.

The consummation of the earthly mission of Christ occurred on the cross, at His cry, “My God , My God, why have you forsaken Me?”, at His death and His final exclamation, “It is finished!”

But three days later, Christ arose from the dead!

And so, this great consummation is continued, protracted, here on the earth, another forty days, as the Risen Lord appears to His disciples.

But then, finally, the consummation came to consummation, to its ending, in the Son of God’s return to His Father in heaven. That’s why I called the Ascension the ending of the ending. It’s the conclusive, decisive end of the earthly redemptive feat of our Savior. There will be no repetition. No second round. The disciples won’t be together again behind locked doors when suddenly the Lord appears among them saying “Peace be with you.” No. In the Ascension the time has come to say goodbye, in a certain sense once and for all, to this singular, unique historical manifestation on earth, in a fallen world, of the Living God in the flesh, the Risen Lamb of God, Christ Jesus. It’s the ultimate conclusion of that earthly mission that began in Bethlehem, was achieved on the cross and was then affirmed in glory and majesty by His Resurrection.

Yet here too at His Ascension we are, as it were, not simply turning a page, the last page of this chapter, but actually shutting the book itself, closing the covers of the book—the “book” of this unrepeatable stage.

That’s what I meant by the words “the ending of the ending.” Christ will return, but not to live out again what’s already been accomplished by Him. That stage is passed, but its fruit, the grace, the spiritual treasure of eternal life, the victory and majesty of that stage are accessible to us all through repentance by faith. That door stays open until the Heavenly Father closes it. He will, at some time not revealed to us, close the door and say, “The time has come.” Then, as the angels said to the apostles, “This Jesus taken from you up to heaven will come in the same way as you have seen him ascending to heaven.”

But as the apostle says in the epistle to the Hebrews, Christ will come the second time “not for the purging of sins but for those awaiting Him for salvation.”

That’s what I meant by saying that the Ascension of the Lord is also the “beginning of the end,” since from that great moment of the return of the Risen Son to the Father we find ourselves in perpetual expectation of His return to us. From the day of the Ascension the whole world, including believers and non-believers, is located in the end times, the last days, in the ultimate, climactic stage of history, believers with a passionate sense of expectation, non-believers with an indefinite, vague unease.

Catholics, in their liturgy, repeat this succinct confession of faith: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ is coming again.” These three phrases encapsulate the whole meaning and prospect of our existence. In Him we more than exist, we have the life of the Spirit and His Kingdom, and we exult in anticipation of the coming day.

So the “end of that ending” has been achieved, and now what has been launched is the beginning of “the end of the age,” and we in this last age await the Beginning of all beginnings, at the appearing of Christ’s glory, and of that beginning there will never be an end: “Behold, I am making everything new!”

Therefore we do not grow faint, all the more as we see the Day approaching! 

The Press

 “The Press” is a function, not a caste, a freedom, not an elite. 

The constitutional tenet that this function remain unfettered protects “free speech” in its written form. It gives “reporters” no greater freedoms than the rest of us enjoy. Indeed, it doesn’t even differentiate between “reporters” and “the rest of us.” 

Reporters have no less, and no more, constitutional protections than the rest of us. Certainly they do not enjoy extra rights and privileges. And most certainly no exemptions from laws that apply to all citizens. 
You can’t break into a house at night and claim “freedom of the press” in court because you were wearing a press pass. I mean, you can try, but it’s bogus. 

You can’t arrest another citizen on the street and coerce them into talking to you just because you fancy yourself a Member of the Caste. I mean, you can try, but the other citizen has as much right to defend himself against you as against anyone else. 

Indeed, in the internet and social media age, we are all reporters, enjoying precisely the same constitutional protections—again, no more and no less—than the self-vaunting, putative secular-priesthood “Press.” 

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complains that the NPR reporter lied to him and showed appalling ignorance in his private interview with her, the News-Entertainment-Impeachocrat Monolith launches with nauseous predictability into fevered, hysterical jeremiads over the Stalinism Pompeo’s complaints portend. Short of a bona fide catastrophe, nothing “The Press” loves more than a big dollop of self-exalting persecution complex. 

Sorry. No. As for the Pompeo-NPR-reporter row, it’s “he said, she said”—not “she’s oppressed, he’s a Nazi” just because he DARED to speak his mind about what went on there. 

We are all the press, we are all reporters, we all enjoy the same rights and freedoms, and none of gets a constitutional “pass” or exemption from the common sphere of humanity, laws, boundaries and responsibilities. 

If someone screams at me and interrupts me and won’t let me get a word in edgewise, it’s my freedom to walk away, refuse to engage with this person a moment longer, even to warn others about what an obnoxious boor this person is. If the obnoxious boor just happens to be a reporter, I am not suddenly catapulted thereby into the ranks of Oppressors of the Press. The obnoxious boor will undoubtedly try to make that case...because he’s an obnoxious boor. And not a little stupid, because he’s swallowed his own PR, drunk his own Kool-Aid, bought his own delusion that “The Constitution” elevates him to a quasi-police role (Thought Police, surely) in our society and that resisting him is akin to treason. 
This is their sacred dogma, their ploy, and their pathology. 

Thank goodness, “the rest of us” (reporters in our way, and thank God no one is stopping me from saying THIS) are free to name it for what it is and not accord it the least shred of respect or credulity.

Only The Soul is Forever

 As C.S. Lewis liked to point out, societies, civilizations and cultures are temporal and finite, but the human soul is for ever. A society isn't a soul and it has no eternal destiny.

The hellish irony worked out all too often in the most concrete and horrific ways, especially during the 20th century, is the Big Lie foisted on the masses that, "If we all sacrifice our happiness and, yes, our rights, for the sake of this Glorious Ideology NOW, then SOME DAY in the future, SOCIETY will attain the peak of evolution and the Perfect Man will dawn." What this TRANSLATES as, in real terms, particularly in the most egregious case of Marxism-Leninism, is this: millions and hundreds of millions of lives are cheap, expendable fodder in the service and pursuit of the Ideology (as, of course, packaged, promoted and enforced by the INDIVIDUALS AT THE TOP...who seem to be living pretty well in the meantime...), and they should be grateful enough (if they know what's good for them) that, maybe a hundred or five hundred years from now, "Society"--the great Moloch to whom they offer up their lives and their children's lives--having finally "arrived" at the peak of its evolutionary destiny, will THANK them for their fine service, whether their service was performed in the factories, at the front, or in the concentration camps. SOCIETY will triumphantly declare "It was all worth it!" And everyone then alive will cheer on cue...and no one will be unhappy...as that would, of course, be a crime against...SOCIETY. Is it any wonder that such ideologies invariably reject, either overtly or implicitly, the revelation of the PERSONAL God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ Who became the Sacrifice Lamb for HUMAN SOULS? No totalitarian ideology can ever reconcile itself to the VALUE God has invested and confirmed, in BLOOD, in the single, everlasting human soul. And why? Not because any ideology has an intrinsic will or a life of its own (any more than a "culture" or "civilzation" does!) but because the ruthless pursuit of an ideology at the expense of all human value and worth is, in fact, the ultimate manifestation in human flesh of diabolical pride and "Individualism"--the megalomania of a Hitler, a Stalin, an Antichrist, that declares, "I am the One Individual for whom all else exists". As Lewis liked to remind people, we must perpetually doubt and beware of those who smilingly assure us they are going to make all our lives better.... It is no accident that the same promisers require the coercive force of government--ultimately, the power of the gun--and the unique--might I say "individualistic"!--status of Leader to achieve these professed aims...though...ain't it funny...they never do.

Better to reign in Hell?

 The compulsion to anarchy and nihilism is fiercest among insipid, vacant creatures cravenly desperate to rise to the top and, so, vindicate their existence.

Yet the only "top" they can conceive of, from the depths of their vacuity, barely reaches the summit of the dust beneath our feet.
And so their frenzied scramble is to drag everything down to the dust and, from the top of that heap of nothingness, bellow their triumph.
It is a very old sickness. Few have captured it more brilliantly than John Milton: "Better to reign in Hell than...."

Conservative "Ideology"?

 What is conservative ideology?

I'd say, there isn't one.

To me, being "conservative" is a kind of antithesis to "ideology." It is a rejection of ideology itself.

It's why, while recognizing that my beliefs fall generally into the conceptual grab-bag that people, perhaps lazily, call "conservatism," the word has no power, no draw, no magnetism for me.

I don't belong to it.

Thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray--who, interestingly, do not themselves run around squawking what "conservatives" they are, like some photographic negative of the obsessive Woke-mantra-braying mobs--as I was saying, Peterson and Murray have repeatedly explored the question of just what cliff, what edge, it is that the Left, in the extreme, goes over, in comparison with the well-known cliff the Extreme Right has been known to go over in history. If you want to pose Nazism and racism as Extreme Right, then where is that cliff for the Extreme Left? And, more importantly, WHY is it there? What IS it about "Left-ism" that gets you to that edge, whatever it is?

I would say that, first of all, one hardly needs to go hunting under every rock to identify the historical atrocities of the Extreme Left. Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, the cataclysm of today's Venezuela, not to mention frenzied, full-of-themselves idiots trashing cities, shooting cops, and bellowing, "I'm not sorry a fascist was killed here tonight"--that's the collective Face of the monumentally, stratospherically self-assured Ideology to which human lives are just a few eggs that have to be broken if you're ever going to make that utopian omelette.

As for "WHY" the Lefist cliff is there--it's there because it IS ideology. Ideology absolute, imperious, ruthless, even bloodthirsty, hungering to destroy whatever it didn't build.

And then, clueless how to build anything at all in its place.

See "Venezuela". See "USSR."

It is supremely telling how rapidly the ideology-drunk Left flits, like a fickle butterfly, from mantra to mantra and from savior to savior, because it's ALL about belonging, belonging to the collective, belonging to the Great Leader, whoever is the latest "Kennedyesque", whoever can be dubbed "iconic" after five minutes in the news feed, whether it's Greta, or Beto, or that sleazy porn-lawyer whose name I blessedly forget.

And when those props crash and burn, it doesn't matter, because it's on to the next convenient props.

The mobs screech, "No Justice, No Peace! Hands up, don't shoot! Say her name!", etc., and in fact launch into the delirious chants even when the chants bear no connection in the slightest conceivable degree to the reality of the given situation, or non-situation. The "situation" doesn't matter: it's the ideological imperative that rules all. Circumstances are nothing but fodder, a fig leaf, today's dose of octane for The Revolution.

The Left's "cliff" can seem hard to pinpoint precisely because it's so monstrous it blocks all horizons and perspective. It's right there under your nose and you don't see it.

Speaking of cliffs, it reminds me of once when I was in Ireland with my family, out on the Dingle peninsula. We went for a ride along the usually beautiful Slea Head drive, where the road winds along right next to the mountains--you can practically put your hand out the window and touch them. But this day was extremely foggy. Having done this ride many times, we knew perfectly well there was a MOUNTAIN right there next to us. Yet it was completely invisible. We could just as well have been driving down the middle of Manhattan. We gave up on it that day and came back when the sun emerged.

The Left's "cliff", its intolerable edge, its pernicious end-game, is precisely the all-blanketing fog of ideological, conceptual, affective, interpersonal, all-pervasive totalitarianism. Its "diversity" is the shallowest charade of accidental distinctions--race, gender "identity", sexual orientation--cartoonishly elevated to the level of all-determinative values (you notice they are suddenly The Thing That Matters Most, because the Left has failed to convince society on just about everything else)--it is a papier mâché diversity masking a core rigidity of lockstep thought-control.

Only, recently, that mask has slipped a bit, hasn't it, and the thought-control gambit, with its accompanying armaments of social ostracism, intimidation, and finally violence, has broken out into the open. They're showing their hand. And it's nothing new.

Truly nothing new under the sun.

To be "conservative" is a kind of ideology-free, default position. It's a rejection of mantras, a refusal to "belong."

The vital difference is not between Left and Right. That's a con game.

The vital difference is between the ideologies, on the one hand, and a kind of default, non-ideological "conservatism" (which at its root suggests "refusing to jettison what works simply to satisfy an ideology") on the other.

Here is the irony: Extreme Right isn't conservative in the least (though extreme rightists, racists, etc., will try to capitalize on the non-ideology of conservatives by horning in on their playing field and pretending solidarity), but Extreme Leftism IS, indeed and in fact, Leftist.

There is no extreme trajectory of a non-ideological conservatism. The trajectories of Leftism and Rightism are inevitably extreme and pernicious...and though they seem to move in opposite directions they always go round the corner, meet each other coming the other way, and merge into indistinction. From the Holocaust to the Gulags and Killing Fields, their legacy is horror.

The real racists (as opposed to the millions and millions of good people the Totalitarian Left will, in their psychosocial campaign of terrorism, call racists simply for not marching in goose-step with them), naturally look for the easiest field to run their plays on, and that is a field empty of all-pervasive ideology. It is, therefore, against such malignant incursions that an ideologically minimalist "conservative" must maintain watch.

The Leftist playing field, on the other hand, requires no such incursions in order to finally produce its own Gulags, Killing Fields and bloody Cultural Revolutions. As history has shown over and over, that's actually the name of the game.

Which, again, is why it can be difficult to see. "I'm looking at the field and I don't see the problem." The FIELD is the problem. It's what it's there for that's the problem. It's the soul-crushing ideology that demands you come down to the field and stay there, and never think about any other game, ever.

I have thought about these things (obviously) for some time now, and so I was, naturally, impressed with this, released this week by Jordan Peterson:

It is reasonable to note that a reductionist and totalitarian exercise like that conducted by the ideologue may have some pedagogical uses, in addition to whatever light it might shed on the heretofore forbidden. It can provide its adherents with some discipline, as it is useful to learn how to organize arguments according to a principle. The requirement for logical coherency thereby demanded can aid in the development of intellectual rigor, as the arguments thus organized must exist with one another coherently and memorably. It can be an effective exercise in rhetoric—the art of persuasive and effective use of language. Ultimately, however, it’s a failure, because the world is too complex for its many manifestations to be reduced to a single cause. It becomes an exercise in post-hoc rationalization, rather than an attempt to understand, predict and control (the proof of understanding). It’s camouflage, façade and fraud. It looks like analysis. It sounds like thought. But it’s just an algorithm: content in, machine-like rules applied, wisdom out. Technically, in fact, it’s the equivalent of a compression algorithm, and a biased one, at that. It simplifies the world, as all systems of category simplify the world, but it does so in part by simply ignoring those elements of reality that are not easily explained by the theory. This is a parody of the use of reductionism in science. Scientists have a rule: Do not multiply explanatory concepts beyond necessity. Or, as Einstein said, “explanations should be as simple as possible (but no simpler).” The test for the utility of a simple explanation is its ability, not to account for the past, and not to be merely logically coherent, but to actually predict something that will happen in the future—within, let it be noted, a specified and definable time frame. Furthermore, to simplify something properly the simplification should sample the domain it is attempting to account for in a manner that equally samples all of it, so that the simplified version (like a low-resolution photo) does not purposefully or accidentally exclude anything of true but undesirable importance.

The Holy Place Within You

 The Holy of Holies. The innermost sanctuary. The place no one has a right to enter. The place where the "sh'kinah", the resplendence of God's presence is manifested. The Creator's own Visitation in awe-ful majesty, fatal to all who dare to intrude unbidden.

The Temple is gone.

Yet you are here.

And the Spirit has descended on His people.

The Holy of Holies is in you. It always was. God's place of Visitation was always the heart of Man and no temple built by human hands.

NONE are bidden there, but you. And ONE meets you there, alone.

MANY are scrambling desperately to own that place, to claim Creatorhood, to hang their banners there and call it their glory. But they can't get in. Not really. Not ever.

They can deceive you into thinking they have, that's all.
And intimidate you into jumping through hoops to prove it.

Don't ever fall for it.

The Holy of Holies is sacrosanct. It belongs to two alone: to you by gift, to God by right.

Live from that place. Refuse every circus-master, scorn all the hoops, despise every script, whatever doesn't issue from the Holy of Holies.

No mob rules there. Mercy and compassion rule there, but on no one's terms but His.

Yours is the FREEDOM to learn it there. "And they will be taught by God...."

You are free: to weep, to laugh, to speak, to say nothing, to act, to refrain, to join, to withdraw, to affirm, to deny, to embrace, to reject...you are free.

And not free at all.

You are bound to attend, in the Holy of Holies, and be true to what meets you there. Your captivity there ("To whom else would we go?") is life and truth.

There is no other freedom.

"Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice!"

BOB

 BOB

So there I was at my college reunion and my old classmate Bob walked up to me. I recognized him immediately. I said, "Bob! It's so great to see you!"

Bob froze in his tracks, shivered all over, turned a little purple, rolled his eyes, sighed with a martyr's exasperation, took a gargantuan here-we-go-again breath, and informed me, "I reject both those assignments, 'Bob' and 'you.' I never asked for the name 'Bob' and don't identify with it. And 'you' is a reductionist objectification, disempowering my existential authenticity and cosmic linkage. I reject all names and pronouns as pernicious instruments of divisiveness and oppression. Instead of a name, my Self-Validation Term is The-One-Who-Peers-Assiduously-Into-The-Unknowable-Coalescense-of-Allness. And instead of a pronoun, I go by my SVT's acronym TOWPAITUCOA. So, while you may have said something like 'Bob lost his glasses' back in the day, before I was woke, now you have to say, 'The-One-Who-Peers-Assiduously-Into-The-Unknowable-Coalescense-of-Allness lost TOWPAITUCOA's glasses.'"

With that, he snapped his mouth shut with a so-there smirk and waited, staring at me.

"Oh," I replied. "Well, isn't that fascinating. And quite a mouthful, too. Not sure I can remember all that. How 'bout I just don't say ANY name or pronoun...or whatever you--er, whatever it was just referred to as alternatives. I'll just leave all that out and make it easier on both of...er, us--I'm sorry, is 'us' allowed?"

Bob glared at me, hissed, "Hater," and stomped off to another circle of folks. I heard, "Bob! It's so great to see you!" and rushed off to the punch bowl to avoid the replay.

Nevertheless, a few moments later Bob's voice rose stridently from across the room, "Say it! SAY it! SAAAAAAY!! IIIIIIIT!!!" Bob was shortly carried out by security, bewailing the world's injustice.

Just as Bob disappeared from the room, feet last, I looked down and saw the pair of glasses he'd been wearing on the floor. "Whaddya know," I announced to a stunned-looking lady next to me, "The-One-Who-Peers-Assiduously-Into-The-Unknowable-Coalescense-of-Allness lost TOWPAITUCOA's glasses."

Duffers, Demagogues and Cowards

 A question Trump really needs to put to Biden directly is, "As president, would you expand the Supreme Court to more than nine justices?" 

ENOUGH already with this insidiously vague nonsense about "court-packing". 

A third of  the country doesn't even understand what it MEANS. 

The really stupid, slack-jawed ones (the "Duffers") think Trump is already "packing the court" simply because he got to fill three vacancies. 

And the really evil ones, who know better (the Demagogues), are capitalizing on that ignorance: "Yeah, yeah, you got it, that's what Trump's doing!" 

It's called...LYING. 

Yeah, I know, it's a ten-dollar word. Look it up. 

And a refusal by Biden to say whether he'd expand the court is called: imperious, arrogant contempt for the American voter. 

Talk about a monarchical presidency in the making....sheesh. 

"You peons don't deserve to know what I'm going to do. Just give me the office and I'll do whatever I want." 

This is the king-wannabe who let his royal highness Hunter tag along on Air Force 2 to go get his million-dollar hauls in countries where VP Daddy was ostensibly serving America. 

Sheesh again. 

Trump has been 1001% transparent compared to Biden. 

When "compassion" means a porous non-border that fuels human trafficking, rape, child molestation and drug cartels, when "court-packing" means keeping the Supreme Court at nine, when "peaceful protest" means burning down city blocks and assassinating police officers, when "Defund Police" is the recipe for civil order, when "Black Lives Matter" promises to "tear the system down" over 9 "unarmed Black Americans" killed per year by policemen but utters NOT A WORD about THOUSANDS of Black Americans slaughtered every year in our cities, we have truly entered the Age of the Duffers, only their wannabe rulers are no kindly, longsuffering magicians like in C.S. Lewis' story: 

"The Magician sighed: 'You wouldn't believe the troubles I've had with them. A few months ago they were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner; they said it saved time afterwards. I've caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat.'"

C.S. Lewis' Duffers were funny, and the magician was noble. 

Today's Duffers aren't funny but inflamed, like Hitler's cheering throngs. And their Demagogue cheerleaders are pathological, power-lusting liars wholly intent on whipping the Duffers into maximum delirium and frenzy. 

There is another category, perhaps more perspicacious than the Duffers and less flagrantly pernicious than the Demagogues. These are the ones who see the perfect nonsense that's being made out of language and what a fraud the whole "Woke" edifice is, yet they are so satisfied with the political capital it brings their "side," they...stay silent. Not least because the mere utterance of "But wait, is that quite true?" would reap a whirlwind of rage from their "friends." In their case, actually, "Silence is How to AVOID Violence." 

It's called Cowardice.

The Body of the Resurrection

 A "sermonette" or "devotional" I shared with my church yesterday morning, to "kick off" the service. On Friday we had a funeral in my church, for a very dear brother, Alexei Yegorovich Zolotaryov. I chose to pick up on certain thoughts our pastor Vladimir Gorbenko ("Volodya") shared with us and take them a step or two further.

This is a translation from the Russian. 
 
-----------------------------------

I want to extend a bit the thoughts that brother Volodya shared with us here at the church on Friday after the funeral of our dear brother Alexei Yegorovich. Volodya spoke about how none of us in fact are "home". We're all on the way there, the way home. 

It does happen that, along this earthly life, we enjoy "cozy" moments, so pleasant that we could wish time itself would stop, or at least take a pause, so we could enjoy the moment longer. 

But no. It's such an obstinate thing, Time, and it isn't going to slow down for anybody! 

All moments, both grievous and joyful, are passing, fleeting, BUT--take note--they're not "ephemeral." Their meaningfulness doesn't evaporate, but remains and compounds and all goes into that SEED which our life in Christ is becoming. The seed that will be planted in the earth in expectation of the great day of the resurrection of God's saints, all those who in Christ have completed their earthly course. 

But of course it's not the soul that's planted in the earth. The apostle Paul wrote (read 2 Corinthians 5:8, about "away from the body is with with the Lord"). 

Nevertheless, the buried body of God's child serves, in its way, as a pledge on that eternal treasure that God has invested in the soul in grace, in the redemption won by the very life of God's Lamb, Christ Jesus. 

(Read 1 Corinthians 15:35-49)

God's power to raise His children doesn't depend on our understanding. Sometimes some ask, "But what if the body of the believer was burned to ashes? Or what if the body has completely returned to the earth and become part of other living organisms? What then?" 

But wasn't the apostle Paul perfectly aware of these things? That's why he writes, under the leading of God's Spirit, that God's intention to raise His own on that great day surpasses all human, and all physical, explanation. 

When we plant a seed--say an apple seed--what happens to the seed? Does it stay there forever just as it was when we planted it? If I dig up an apple tree so that all its roots are exposed, will I find the seed, the seed that the tree grew out of, somethere there among the roots? Of course not. 

(Read John 12:24, where Jesus talks about the seed that must die in order to produce fruit.) 

So here's a paradox: the seed is gone, it disappeared, it "died"! Yet, in fact, it hasn't disappeared because, look: there it is, the apple tree! The seed fell to the earth and died. But look, it's alive, as an apple tree; it wasn't lost. "Everything has become new."

Just like the body of the Lord was planted in the earth and three days later appeared, the same but different, the same one but glorified. Not a ghost, but physical, living. Yet no longer limited by the physical laws of this fallen world. It is a paradox beyond our understanding. 

The risen body of the Lord Jesus is a victorious body, the body of the conquering life of the Father's eternal Son. The conquering LIFE located within shines through the glorified body, in the unity of perfection. 

This is what Paul means when he writes (read 1 Cor. 15:42-45 again, emphasizing the difference between the "natural" [in Greek "psychic", i.e., "soulish"] body and the "spiritual" body). 

The risen body of the Lord Jesus is a spiritual body. NOT in the sense--let me underline that, categorically NOT in the sense--that it isn't physical (which would be heresy). It's physical, as the Lord Himself plainly asserted (read Luke 24:38-43, where the Risen Christ invites the stunned disciples to touch Him and see that He's no ghost, and then asks for something to eat...not because He was hungry!). 

But it's a SPIRITUAL body, according to Paul's explanation. Spiritual in the sense that it has completely transcended the limitations of this passing, decomposing world, and now belongs utterly to the principles, the power, and the might of His Father's kingdom in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, in the eternally abiding perfection of love and righteousness. 

"Spiritual body" isn't the opposite of "physical body." Paul says it's the opposite of the "natural" body we now possess, the corruptible body that can never enter that realm. 

The spiritual body is a body that will never again suffer the least alienation from the fullness of God's presence. 

The spiritual body is the body able to experience and "soak in" the raptures of God's unveiled kingdom just as much as, and in absolute harmony with, the spirit within that body.

Which is impossible for us on this side of the resurrection. 

This exceeds all human understanding, but it's God's promise to us in Christ. This glory is to be found only ahead, on the horizon, where it awaits and summons us forward. Time itself is eagerly rushing there, so don't bother asking Time to hold up a bit and slow down. It won't listen! 

Our destiny in Christ: (read, in conclusion, 1 Cor. 15:50-58).