Monday, November 9, 2020

Frantic Desperation

 FRANTIC DESPERATION


Coming off my sermon yesterday at church, about Peter at the Last Supper, I am moved to meditate a bit further....

Peter's demonstrable pattern during these final hours is one of frantic desperation. He knows exactly what would be best and he is getting frantic, and bewildered, that things seem to be going all wrong and the Lord isn't DOING anything about it. 

The pattern couldn't be starker. 

"I'll wash your feet, Peter." 

"NO, Lord, I'll NEVER let that happen!" (I.e., "Don't you understand, Lord, how WRONG that is?")

"You will all abandon me." 

"NO, Lord, not ME. Maybe all of them will [Gosh, thanks, Peter], but me? NEVER!" (I.e., "You've got it all WRONG, Lord, don't You see?")

"One of you will betray Me." 

"John, quick, find out who it is ('cause I'll put a stop to this)." 

"What you are doing, do quickly." 

("Wait, WHAT? You're letting him GO? That's just WRONG.") 

And then the sword, the clumsy, confused attempt to save Jesus by cutting off a servant's ear. The pathos reaches the most acute, poignant levels. 

And finally, Peter runs. And soon says, "I don't know that man." And, at last, collapses in a heap of psychic exhaustion and grief. All is lost, including--no, especially, his highest ideals of his own character. And he's lost the One he did, truly, love all the while. 

That love was the saving difference between him and Judas, because in other ways there were uncomfortable similarities. 

Frantic desperation is never the recipe for love's best path forward. It only blurs your vision, frays your nerves, and makes you immeasurably less than what you should be for those who need you most. Even when the frantic desperation issues from "the best motives." For one thing, even the best motives aren't omniscience (nobody on earth but Jesus actually knew what was happening and why), and for another the best motives, in their best light, can't be defeated by whatever transpires--they will be tested and refined, yes, like gold in the fire, but not defeated. 

After coming through the crucible of his great disillusionment, Peter survived (where Judas didn't), because, deeper than the frantic desperation, was the love for His Lord and Savior. That was always the whole point. 

All the Lord's seeming "mistakes" that evening were the transcendent path to Ressurection and humanly incomprehensible triumph, into which we have been called by God's grace. 

"Wow, who knew?"

Right. Who knew.... 

Friday, November 6, 2020

Jordan Peterson, Personality Lecture 2015: a few reactions

 Amazing lecture, from some years ago. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY7a1RXMbHI

I was particularly struck by Peterson's comment that (I'm paraphrasing) that "big is bad." 
Whether it's big government, big corporation, big Church, big mob, whatever it is, the capacity of "big" for corruption increases exponentially as "big" increases. 
Also, his comments on "reacting to meaning," i.e., that when we "see" something, whether a simple Coke can or even a person, it isn't initially the object but a meaning that we see, and it is the meaning that we respond to. His example of betrayed love is perfect. The spouse who's discovered the other spouse has been having an affair: suddenly the traitor-spouse LOOKS different. Same person,same presumably attractive (at least to the other spouse) body, fundamentally in virtually all ways the same person (which itself is the most horrifying realization: "THIS is who he/she has been all this time?!"), and yet this person who was, just five minutes, loved and adored and extremely appealing is now revolting, repellent, the thought of even touching him/her is nauseating. 
Which points out that mere physical attraction to what you think you "see" is almost entirely illusory (something akin to those autostereograms, where you do indeed see a picture but only because you're looking at it in the way that let's you see it that way), a complex of projections and assumptions about both yourself and the surrounding world. And how easily that can be obliterated, in the blink of an eye, reveals something much, much deeper. 
Also, a very important point he makes in immediate connection with this: how it is, when you are suddenly staring, in horror, at the spouse who isn't what you always thought, that the horror cannot be contained in simple disappointment in a single person--as dreadful as such betrayal is, if it were merely disappointment in one person, it would be relatively manageable. But it's not merely that. If you were wrong all along about him/her, then it's very likely you were stupid enough (as you would say to yourself, so I'm not being cruel but just reflecting your thoughts at the moment) to be wrong about so many other things: who else has deceived me, who else knew about this, what does this say about my entire social network, what is real anymore, who am I, where have I been and where am I going? 
One brick falling out of the wall suggests the entire structure is about to crash, leaving only ruin and despair behind. 
This goes right to the heart of our deepest human, existential fears. 
It's why two drunks in a bar come to blows over whether there's life on other planets. As moronic as it is to come to blows over it (and pretty moronic to get drunk in the first place), they are, neverthless, acting out this root, existential conflict. 
One of them 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, of course.
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.
(Which is why there is a power, disarming and liberating, yet insufficiently appreciated generally, in the simple phrase, "I don't know.")