Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius"Eternalized Review" (ER)

"Where Classical Meets Christian: What Marcus Aurelius Can Teach Us Today" (CMC)

As always, I'm a lazy moose. I read some translation of Meditations long ago, probably in my "I think I'm an atheist, but something in me is rejecting it" phase. The two links above explore some of the thoughts that were flowing through the river of my consciousness then,  and to some degree now. Time can be seen as a river, though I often find the eddies to be the parts of the flow to pay attention to.

Having grown up in a strict Baptist church,  being "saved" by "giving my life to Christ", I ended up with lots of questions. The claim that the Wedding At Cana miracle was changing water into grape juice was dogma in my home church since drinking was prohibited there, seemed
sketchy". For some reason I didn't blog in those days (I worked on an IBM S/3 at the time, a whopping 512K of memory that we had trouble even using on the HUGE model 15D. When there are no graphics and the operating system is written in assembler, memory pressure is much reduced. So good excuse!

 My "deep thinking" about life, the universe and everything" in the late 1970's. early '80's can be somewhat understood by the aside that the  S/3 had a 2 digit display for telling the operators / system programmers what went wrong. The small troop of new hires tasked with minor enhancements and mostly maintenance always wanted to slip a "4Q" halt in. Ah, juvenile humor -- I believe that Marcus, and certainly Christ would admonish against it, though both understand the frailties of human nature, especially in youth. 

Oh how our pitiful human brains work, don't work, and work strangely  -- this book connected me to many past memories. 

Marcus was very aware of the shortness of this life, and the metaphysical (though not necessarily spiritual) uncertainty of death. ER says of Stoicism: 

Logos designates rational and connected thought. It exists in individuals as the faculty of reason and on the cosmos as the rational principle that governs the organisation of the universe. Thus, rationality and clear-mindedness allow one to live in harmony with the logos.

In Christianity, Christ is the logos ... in the form of the Holy Spirit on page 199, Marcus  says "... and obedient to your own daemon (the god that is within you ...". While Marcus seems to beat around the bush a bit, he seems clear on man having a spirit, and there being "god's". If the universe has a logos that governs all, then there is a God. If there is no logos, than all is random. Marcus accepts that as a possibility, however in reading the book, it seems very clear that that he really believes in the gods and the logos, and even that some "god" at least CAN be within you. 

CMC says: 

The ethical preoccupations of Marcus and the New Testament writers are much the same: what it means to be just and good, the importance of living with purpose and without luxury, the requirements of stewardship and serving others, the role of prayer and Providence, the danger of making false value judgments and blaming others, the need to control desire and the passions, etc. Of course, there are important differences, and therein lie the distinctions that cast Christianity in bold relief and help to explain why Christianity captured the moral imagination of the ancient world in a way that Stoicism failed to do. These distinctions may also offer some prophetic insights into the fate of Stoicism’s dramatic resurgence in our secular age.

A prime dilemma of the modern age is that man by nature seeks to judge, but by what standard? Matter and science say nothing of good nor evil. If one assumes "telos" as Marcus does, perhaps we can convince ourselves that we are good by nature. The belief in "the noble savage" .... the idea that man is good, but society corrupts him. 

EC says: 

Marcus insists that we always follow Nature, as it is good and rational – driven by logos. Since we are all interconnected, man is good by nature and nothing natural is evil.

On the list of philosophical, theological and political conundrums, man being "basically good" vs "basically fallen or evil"  is a primary question. If nature or natures god are "good", why is there evil in the world? The theological and philosophical study of this question is theodicy. Verty worthy to consider, but way too complicated for a blog post.

As James Madison said in Federalist 51, "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

While Marcus may firmly wish, and even believe, that his basic nature is "good", his accepting the task of Roman emperor and expanding the empire to its greatest extent (his reign was one of continuous warfare)  shows that by action, his beliefs were not in alignment with his actions. One of the base issues of being a human seeking "the good". 

Are men and philosophies to be judged by what they do, or by what they wish to do? Certainly something to be meditated on. 

This is a very human problem, and for me one that helped convince me that I needed an internal "spirit of truth" to improve the course of my life, as well as a practice to allow that spirit vs my weak flesh to improve my conformance to the good.  As Paul says in Romans 7 15-20:

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

The only time in the book that Marcus mentions Christianity is on page 180: 

A soul is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or dispersed or continue to exist; but so this readiness comes from a man's own judgment, not from the mere stubbornness, as with the Christians, but considerably and with dignity and in a way to persuade another without a tragic show. 

My interpretation of that statement is that while Marcus tried to value the holding of many possible spiritual realities (eg the soul being extinguished, dispersed, or continue to exist), he did not like the specifics of Christianity -- in fact persecution of Christians increased under his rule. 

On page 148 we find: 

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say about you anything injurious, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. You will discover that there is no reason to take any trouble that these men may have this or that opinion about you. However, you must be well disposed towards them, for by nature they are friends. And the gods too aid them in all ways, by dreams, by signs, towards the attainment of those things on which they set a value.

We might summarize that with "love your neighbor as yourself"  ... even if he is wrong, a slanderer,  a person having strong beliefs in opposition to yours, etc. If we were all solidly practicing Stoics or Christians, toleration would abound, and the realization that we are fellow travelers on the sinking boat of mortality. In the physical world, there are no survivors, and Marcus does a good job of clearly pointing out the importance of keeping that perspective before you. 

In Roman Stoicism there are 3 principles (from ER): 

The first one is the discipline of perception. It requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought. It is not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is to exercise control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.

The second one is the discipline of action. It relates to our relationship with other human beings. Marcus frequently repeats that we were made not for ourselves but for others, our nature is fundamentally unselfish. However, our duty to act justly does not mean that we must treat others as our equals; it means that we must treat them as they deserve.

The third one is the discipline of will. While the discipline of action governs our approach to the things in our control, those that we do; the discipline of will governs our attitude to things that are not within our control, those that we have done to us (by others or by nature).

 The translation I read has good reviews and I found it very readable. Having at least a passing understanding of Stoicism in these contentious times seems an aid to discipline of perception, a worthy goal.

Message To Christian Church (Jordan Peterson)

This just needs to be watched! 

 

Atheism Not Working As Promised

 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/atheists-against-atheism/

I've done a mind numbing amount of reading and writing on this subject. My writing is always too long for a modern audience, and the sad fact is that I'm not very good at. it anyway. Perhaps some others can save the day?

The following quote is from Niall Ferguson, a well respected intellectual. 

I know I can’t achieve religious faith . . . but I do think we should go to church. We don’t have, I don’t think, an evolved ethical system. I don’t buy the idea that evolution alone gets us to be moral. It can modify behaviour, but there’s just too much evidence that in the raw, when the constraints of civilisation fall away, we behave in the most savage way to one another. I’m a big believer that with the inherited wisdom of a two-millennia old religion, we’ve got a pretty good framework to work with.

He is right that HE can't achieve religious faith ... as Luther put it:

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. 

Smart people are looking around at the "Post God" world and coming to the obvious conclusion that things aren't working as advertised. It is yet another case of "mail order bride arrives in wrong shape and color". 

I may not ever look physically like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or spiritually like Jesus Christ (not in this life, I will in Heaven), but I'm way better off if I go to the gym and church anyway! 

Is Man Good By Nature?

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/04/20/jane-goodall-finds-chimps-alas-share-human-savagery/f8620298-67f8-4ca7-ae45-32d5ede3d588/

One of the core tenets of  leftism is that man is basically "good" -- "The noble savage".  The assertion is that society that corrupts, and if society lets "nature take its course" ... usually focused on the goodness of removing sexual mores ("repression"), we would basically get back to "The Garden". 

Religions say that man is "fallen / not enlightened / etc" and needs religion, family, and society to be moulded into being "civilized" rather a violent savage.

The link is to Jane Goodall's observation that chimps were very violent forced a lot of the left to realize that there was a snake in the drug fueled "garden" postulated by many 1960s leftists. 

"Make love not war" turned out to not be as "natural" as the mostly wishful thinking "humanists" thought. 

Perhaps man needed to accept his fallen nature, and be Baptized and led by the Holy Spirit to actually experience love. 

Overcoming The Will To Power

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/the-delta-in-stupidity.php

The last line of linked is the title of this post, and the reason for it. 

I think these pieces provide an antidote to stupidity. Overcoming the will to power remains the ineradicable problem.

The bolded is the story of human life since the fall. Satan's will to power ejected him from Heaven. Adam and Eve's will to power ejected them from the Garden of Eden. The will to power is rooted in pride. My ideas are so good that everyone ought to agree with them and respect/worship me because of the brilliance of my thought. 

PL has fallen into name calling ... "stupidity" etc. I wish they had not, however there is no such thing as human perfection, they eschew profanity, which makes me happy.

The linked post is a worthy read.  

Teach Your Children Well

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/how-the-west-lost-god/ 

A rather long article, however the message is short and sweet. Statistical evidence is strong that it is secular education is what has reduced religiosity in America rather than scientific/technological advances, wealth, mass media, etc

The article gives a TON of detail as how this conclusion is arrived at. 

It is a good news / bad news story for Christians. On the positive side, **IF** you are able to homeschool, the odds that your children can escape secularization are good. The bad news is that tons of people already through public schooling nearly need a miracle to return to the church, and it will be nigh on impossible to recover the public schools, so the vast majority of children will end up secularized. 

Of course, God can do ANYTHING, so prayer is critical!

Civilization is a process as well as a product, and the school is the place wherein the process of civilization is enacted, yielding its final product in the form of grown men and women inducted into the social order of which they’re a part. If control over schooling is ceded to those who are hostile or even just indifferent to religious faith, how could we expect anything other than a drift toward a less religious society? Whether we are urban or rural, childless or fecund, conservative or liberal in our outlook, well-credentialed or not, the crucial question, empirically as well as morally, is this: What will we teach our children to associate with the true, the good, and the beautiful during their earliest and most impressionable years? The fate of our social order depends much more on how we answer this question than we seem to realize.

In The Fullness of Time, Paul L Maier

 The subtitle is "A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter and the Early Church". 

Looked around the internet for a review I could steal, but none to be found. 

My copy is autographed by the author as he came to our Church in Rochester and spoke. He is intelligent, witty, and fun to listen to and interact with. As a hobby, he acquires and uses heavy equipment including a cat, a crane!, a payloader and who knows what else. Apparently he has a large pond for which the crane is very handy. 

If you like video: 

Maier is able to weave the Bible, ancient historians, and archeology into a narrative that is very informative and also spiritually uplifting. He gives us a glimpse of into what life was like when Christ's ministry was in progress, and some of the personalities involved. The model reconstructions and pictures of the modern sites make one consider a trip to the Holy Land. 

Highly recommended for believers and non-believers alike. 

Objections Overruled

 https://livingapologetics.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/book-review-objections-overruled/

I happen to have a copy that my pastor let me have. I WAS going to get him a return copy since I marked it all up ;-( As the linked blog says, it doesn't look to be easy to get in printed form. 

I found it excellent for a nice concise example of "apologetics" (NOT "apologizing. Defending!)

For those interested in defending the faith in these days of doubt. I also recommend "The Reason For God"

A quote from "reason" ... "If a premise ("there is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ("Napalming babies is culturally relative") then why not change the premise?" 

Without God, everything is permitted ... it is all relative, and all about power. If the vote says "kill babies", isn't that the end of it? 

The Unbroken Thread, Discovering The Wisdom Of Tradition In The Age of Chaos

 https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/01/a-guide-for-recovering-the-wisdom-of-the-past/

The book was of course irresistible to me. While the Bible talks of the foolishness of building your "house" (life) on sand, the modern West has decided that building lives on materialism, pleasure, career, technology, etc is a worthy goal. Solomon knew this is vanity long ago, and we are just proving it yet again. (Eccl 1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.He who has eyes can see that Solomon is still right) 

If you are only going to read one of the Sohrab Ahmari books, this would be my pick. If you think you want more, or if your objective is to come to faith rather than save the culture, I'd go with "From Fire By Water" which is a prequel.  

The Chinese, even in a Communist state, respect their elders and their tradition. Even in the US, those of Asian, Indian, Korean, etc are vastly surpassing those raised in the desolation of American "culture". The fact that ivy league schools have to limit their admission of these nationalities or the schools would be primarily "minority". Such has been the case for Jews forever ... they have been discriminated against because they were successful, because they had a specific culture, passed on from generation to generation that included a tradition of reading, education and adherence to religion. I also believe they are especially blessed because they are Gods chosen people -- and time has verified that. 

On page 78 he quotes rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: 

"He [man] must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man". Today, we must add, ANY work ... worship, study and reflection on our creator are required to be human. 

Page 97, "... rather ritual and religion are really at the core of the human matter",  As "Moral, Believing, Animals" makes clear ... we all have our morality, beliefs and religion, even though Western civilization is in tragic denial of this obvious fact, and the denial is causing painful breakage - in ourselves, in our families, in our communities, and in our cultures. 

Page 140, "Augustine provided the Catholic church with what in future centuries it would need so much: an oasis of absolute clarity in a troubled world ..."  "City of God" is a timeless treasure. 

Page 173, Related to John Henry Newman, "The individual soul was called to submit to the authority of an apostolic body tracing to Christ's first followers, and that body's judgements couldn't be wrong". 

I could spend and likely will spend a lot of text on this statement in the future. It comes down to "the Bible or the Pope"? Given the history of the church, it seems impossible to accept that the pope/church is "infallible".  Just on the issue of celibacy alone, which was not a requirement until the Second Lateran Council held in 1139, one can only assume that the church was wrong for a thousand years (Peter was married), or God changed his mind. Based on the homosexuality of priests, abuse of children, and inability to get priests, one tends to look to the Apostle Paul saying it is better to marry than to burn, than to the "infallibility" of the church.  

We need authority, and it is critical that the authority be correct and eternally reliable. As Hebrews 13:8 says "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and forever." 

So is our authority the unchanging word of God, or that of a human pope? 

The Bible is a much better foundation than even tradition. As the book makes clear, tradition is VERY important, however it is not God. 

My biggest concern with the book and with Catholicism is that "whatever the church says" is dangerously close to "whatever the culture says".  The church is seems close to approving abortion, gay "marriage", and who knows what else on that slippery slope. 

It is thorny if you are Catholic. Do you follow tradition or the Bible? 

Matthew 10:34-35 "Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law ..." 

The Christian church, and Christians are to be "the salt of the earth". Matt 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people."

Going along to get along is really not an option. Can a pope allow Joe Biden to strongly support abortion, gay "marriage", and transgender, yet still be the salt of the earth? 

Anton, Modern Machiavelli

 https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-art-of-spiritual-war/?fbclid=IwAR0412Bi_iXQ9zKBraOeWiTg23-vCzlRloalwLCyx9S9Amj8D2UecGeIWOI#null

The link is to an excellent, though maybe a little esoteric article by Michael Anton, the esteemed author of the "Flight 93 Election". 

Machiavelli has a poor reputation in Christian circles for obvious reasons, however, just because you don't agree with a lot of a person's thinking is no reason to trash all of it.  

Machiavelli faced a challenge so startlingly similar to ours that it almost seems as if history does repeat itself. To put it as succinctly possible, he sought to liberate philosophy and politics—theory and practice—from a stultifying tradition and corrupt institutions.

The following quote can be thought of as somewhat equivalent to the idea that Christians may need to use "unsavory tools" (like violence)  to protect their families, the weak, and the eternal souls of billions.  This is also dangerous, but possibly necessary. One of my mottos -- "safety first when lighting fires with gasoline"!

They had to admit in other words that in an important respect the good has to take its bearings by the practice of bad cities or that the bad impose their law on the good.

A quote directly applicable to our times; 

Our institutions are rotten. For those needing details on how, I lay it out in chapter 3 of The Stakes. For two fresher examples see, first, the way the government colluded with hedge funds to crush small online investors trying to block an all-too-typical financial sector wealth-extraction power play; second, look at Anthony Fauci’s transparently false denials of having funded COVID research in China, and the media’s (and government’s) shameless attempts to cover it all up. There is really not one institution left in America that is not corrupt in both senses: borderline incompetent, but also venal, self-serving and lawless.

Here is my review of "The Stakes".

As a conservative technologist this really hits home: 

The classics were for almost all practical purposes what now are called conservatives. In contradistinction to many present-day conservatives however, they knew that one cannot be distrustful of political or social change without being distrustful of technological change.

 The discussion of "sophistry" vs "propaganda" is illuminated in "The Ethics of Rhetoric". Basically, sophistry is "fake news", and "propaganda" is more like "long term marketing speech", normally linked with institutions once trusted, and for the uninformed, still trusted.  

Whereas sophistry is the art of persuading a particular democratic assembly on a given issue on a specific day, propaganda aims to shape public opinion broadly and, if not permanently, for as long as humanly possible. Strauss is saying that the classics’ reluctance to innovate—their dispositional conservatism—made them vulnerable to conquest via this new weapon. The conquest happened. Christianity waged a spiritual war against the classical world which the latter proved unable to resist

Machiavelli played the very long game ... which Christians likely need to play today, but with a completely different foundation. 

He proposes to do this via a popular-philosophic alliance in which the people are convinced by a new type of propaganda, disseminated by Machiavelli’s successors, to allow the philosophers to rule (indirectly) in exchange for philosophy providing what the people most want: material plenty and a modicum of security (P 25). Fat and happy, they will forget God, or at least bestow their gratitude on others. (Though there’s a lot more to it than just this.)

So philosophy begat science/technology which caused the masses to forget God and worship science.  Like most best laid plans of man, it is doubtful that Niccolo thought that philosophy, and even the concept of metaphysical truth, would be buried under the "stuff" and entertainment heaped on man in unbelieveale (at Machiavelli's time) plenty. 

A worthy read. 

Bonhoeffer, Metaxis

 Since I read this on Kindle, here is a link to my highlights and notes on Goodreads.

Here is a link to decent review of the book.

A major part of the book is documenting Bonhoeffer's deep theological challenge of living our faith in Christ. His question of "What is the church"?  is directly applicable today. Is the church a social organization of people that gather together on Sunday to be entertained, to be identified as "virtuous", "woke", etc or is it a set of committed, confessing, devoted followers of Christ who humbly seek to live their lives increasingly in his example of being wholly human and wholy holy (spiritual)?

The very troubling part of the book is how easy it is to map Nazi Germany to "America" today -- which is much the same as Nazi Germany not being "Germany". We are clearly no longer the Constitutional Republic that we were founded as. We are largely a fascist pagan state. Hitler killed 6 million Jews, our holocaust of abortion has killed 60 million babies.  

In Nazisim, the ideology of Fascism -- massive government bureaucracy, media control, church control, big business cronyism, the judicial system, education all collaborating to create creeping totalitarianism; was combined with nationalism, racism, paganism, and idolatry (for the swastika and the person of Hitler). 

Today, massive government bureaucracy, media, liberal churches, big business, the judiciary, the educational system, etc are combined in censoring ("cancelling") alternate views, paganism through "wokeism", and increasing idolatry through symbols like rainbows, BLM, the earth (environmentalism), masks, etc. covered here. 

So far we are missing the "strongman focus, our "Hitler", who the mass of the population worship. Is that a requirement?, or will worship of wealth, pleasure, etc, and the people who embody those (Musk, Bezos, Gates, etc) suffice? 

Some interesting quotes from the book: 

You cannot claim you believe something if you don’t live like you believe it. God is not fooled by our claiming to believe the words of some well-crafted statement of faith—or by our dutiful church attendance—any more than your neighbors are fooled by it, or the devil is fooled by it.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.

God is the one who invented reality, and reality can only be seen truly as it exists in God. Nothing that exists is outside his realm. So there are no ethics apart from doing God’s will, and God—indeed, Jesus Christ—is the nonnegotiable given in the equation of human ethics:

Hitler must be called a Nietzschean, although he likely would have bristled at the term since it implied that he believed in something beyond himself. This clashed with the idea of an invincible Führer figure, above whom none could stand. Still, Hitler visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar many times, and there are photos of him posed, staring rapturously at a huge bust of the philosopher. He devoutly believed in what Nietzsche said about the “will to power.” Hitler worshiped power, while truth was a phantasm to be ignored; and his sworn enemy was not falsehood but weakness. For Hitler, ruthlessness was a great virtue, and mercy, a great sin.

Here in the early 21st century it is an important book for us to "read and weep" as we ponder it's message. Is our silence violence? 

Hillsdale, Faith And The University

 https://blog.hillsdale.edu/online-courses/faith-and-the-university

Excellent podcast from Good Friday on the proper role of the university in culture. I enjoyed the message on Catholics and Protestants getting along especially. 

Muggerich, Holocaust, Death Wish

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-great-liberal-death-wish/ 

Muggerich is yet another author who I would like to read more of. I'm pretty sure he was on "Firing Line" with William F Buckley a number of times. I was lucky enough to see at least one of those, but have no remembrance of which one. 

The link is to a lecture at Hillsdale College, yet another institution which I follow a bit as much as I can manage to find the time. It focuses on "why liberals seem to want to destroy lives"? Through time Communist and Fascist holocausts, through abortion/euthanasia, as well as the somewhat more subtle methods of consumerism, homosexuality, transgender, etc 

Let’s look again at the humane holocaust. What happened in Germany was that long before the Nazis got into power, a great propaganda was undertaken to sterilize people who were considered to be useless or a liability to society, and after that to introduce what they called “mercy killing.” This happened long before the Nazis set up their extermination camps at Auschwitz and elsewhere, and was based upon the highest humanitarian considerations. You see what I’m getting at? On a basis of liberal-humanism, there is no creature in the universe greater than man, and the future of the human race rests only with human beings themselves, which leads infallibly to some sort of suicidal situation. It’s to me quite clear that that is so, the evidence is on every hand. The efforts that men make to bring about their own happiness, their own ease of life, their own self-indulgence, will in due course produce the opposite, leading me to the absolutely inescapable conclusion that human beings cannot live and operate in this world without some concept of a being greater than themselves, and of a purpose which transcends their own egotistic or greedy desires. Once you eliminate the notion of a God, a creator, once you eliminate the notion that the creator has a purpose for us, and that life consists essentially in fulfilling that purpose, then you are bound, as Pascal points out, to induce the megalomania of which we’ve seen so many manifestations in our time—in the crazy dictators, as in the lunacies of people who are rich, or who consider themselves to be important or celebrated in the western world. Alternatively, human beings relapse into mere carnality, into being animals. I see this process going on irresistibly, of which the holocaust is only just one example. If you envisage men as being only men, you are bound to see human society, not in Christian terms as a family, but as a factory-farm in which the only consideration that matters is the well-being of the livestock and the prosperity or productivity of the enterprise. That’s where you land yourself. And it is in that situation that western man is increasingly finding himself.

Muggerich considers this obvious truth of life being devalued through abortion, euthanasia, etc  as a way to see in our time the truth of what Christ told us so clearly. 

... when it’s a question of choosing whether to save your soul or your body, the man who chooses to save his soul gathers strength thereby to go on living, whereas the man who chooses to save his body at the expense of his soul loses both body and soul. In other words, fulfilling exactly what our Lord said, that he who hates his life in this world shall keep his life for all eternity, as those who love their lives in this world will assuredly lose them.

As a Lutheran, we believe that it is not human choice that leads to faith, however those of us not baptized as infants do have the strong illusion of choice -- verses like Joshua  24:15 "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

It is very worthwhile to read the whole piece -- and to look up Muggerich if you are not familiar with him. 

The essential feature, and necessity of life is to know reality, which means knowing God. Otherwise our mortal existence is, as Saint Teresa of Avila said, no more than a night in a second-class hotel.

Jordan Peterson, Savage Messiah

 https://merionwest.com/2020/10/26/jordan-peterson-and-bringing-back-solzhenitsyn/

Interesting article relative to a book on Peterson that I will likely be reading at some point. 

Moral Believing Animals, Pass 2

This is my 2nd pass through this important work. I now have the hardcover to lend out to "locals". 

I'd make the title "Moral, Believing Beings", but I'm not the author ... 

My blog on the first pass is here.

A link to a more detailed review here. 

The SHORT summary:

1. The book makes an excellent case that we ALL live by faith in mental models/narratives -- we have no choice as "moral, believing, animals" since those models are as necessary as "air" for us.  Wittgenstein seems to agree.
2. Given that, our situation requires we "choose" the model/narrative that seems best to apply to our shared condition, and/or is more effective for a meaningful life, and potentially eternal life. 
3. If we can come to terms with these assertions (hard task, given our propensity to believe that our current model is THE TRUTH), we might all be able to understand that all our models are really floating in the same boat of unprovable faith! Perhaps, even if we are not able to make that leap, we can at least have less malice toward our fellow believers

Like all believers (which this book strongly asserts we all are), I would love to "convince" you that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life. I understand that is not very likely, though I believe that with the power of the Holy Spirit, ALL things are possible! 

In any case, perhaps we can understand why we have our differences. 

I Hope Your Cancer Doesn't Come Back

As a Covid "survivor" (for my wife and I it was the mild side of the flu), I observe something that I find interesting. Especially when I inform people that have been taking Covid especially seriously that we have "been there, done that", the response I commonly get is "I really hope that you don't suffer any of the long term effects that can come with Covid". 

Yes, we were not that worried about Covid, due at least mostly to both of us having survived serious life challenges in the past few years (spinal cord injury causing initial neck down paralysis, brain infection requiring brain surgery, resulting in a period of not being able to recall my name). The biggest thing those challenges showed us is that we are NOT in charge. Our next breath (if it happens) is a gift from God if he so chooses. Gratefulness for Grace is our response -- we have been blessed to better realize how dependent we are on God. 

When we recovered from our challenges, the near universal response when others were informed were along the lines of "wow, you must be really happy to have come out of that like you did". 

I can't recall a single instance of "I hope you don't suffer any future bad effects because of what you went through", although I'm nearly certain that was pretty much a universal sentiment. Unstated because it was obvious -- like I hope the sun comes up tomorrow. 

When a cancer survivor informs me that they have been cancer free for five years, so they have "made it", I have ZERO desire to say "well, I hope that is the case, but it CAN return, and of course there MAY be many negative long term effects from having survived cancer even if it doesn't return". 

Why would it even cross my mind to say something like that, and why does it cross the minds of so many of those seeing Covid as a "defining issue"? 

I have no pat answer, just some thoughts:

• If you have mostly bought into the Covid narrative,  any sort of real world counterexample is a threat to your accepted narrative, and that is bigger than common civility. The apparent fact of a real world "survivor" who experienced it as "mild flu" is just not acceptable in that world view.  It MUST be challenged to maintain your virtue. 
  
  
• You have invested a lot in "being with it" on Covid ... lots of isolation, lots of masking, maybe even some mask shaming of others and some mask virtue signalling. You are smart, superior, and confident! Those who cast doubt on your virtue are to be pitied -- and it is your responsibility to inform them that they are NEVER to be free of worry about Covid. (well at least until the "science" shows that the vaccine is "100% effective").
  
  
• As with everything in our divided "all is political" world, it is imperative to show that you are on the "right (left) side". ALL depends on that distinction. There are some so crazy on the "Covid denier" (well, they really don't deny there is a virus, but you know what I mean)  side that they go to church, apparently literally wanting to kill others! One must take all measures you can to insure that there is no confusion as to which side you are on -- you are a Pharisee!  JUST under the law of wokeness. You are thankful to science and wokeness that you are in no way in sympathy with those who have left the true way of Covid wokeness!  They will be judged eventually -- even if it takes years. The after effects of allowing Covid to contaminate them will show the error of their ways! Perhaps they will be consigned to eternal damnation?
  
  
• We **DO** have control! If we follow the mandated measures to avoid the contamination of Covid  we WILL remain pure! We have faith in true science! We believe!  The unbelievers are trying to tempt us to doubt -- they may not have actually had it. They may be lying, or perhaps their tests were done at an inferior "Red State" facility -- their "experience" is invalid! Our ideas are so good, they need to be mandatory! A mandatory world lockdown would have saved is all! 

Certainly, nearly none of the "I hope you don't suffer in the long run" people have any of the thoughts from my bullets above consciously. They just have "a need" to attempt to get the "denier" to remain afraid at some level. "It is only right". 

We ALL "know not what we do" in this vale of tears. That is why some of us crazies see weekly Holy Preaching and Holy Communion to be far more important than our next breath in this mortal coil. 

Orthodoxy, Chesterton

 I find this to be a good summary of the book:

An influential Christian author of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton wrote Orthodoxy as a defense of the Christian faith. Meant to be a companion to Chesterton's Heretics, Orthodoxy constructs an "alternative philosophy" to the philosophies of the time. Chesterton explains both why he believes that Orthodox Christianity best explains human existence, and why he does not find other philosophies convincing. However, in defending Christianity, Chesterton does not avoid the paradox, wonder, or mystery of Christianity either. After all Orthodoxy is--as the author himself notes--also a spiritual and intellectual autobiography as well, with Chesterton providing illustrations and examples from his own life. In fact, because of the autobiographical element, many readers are pleasantly surprised by the wit and humor with which he tackles the difficult subjects in Christianity. An important defense of Christianity, G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy is a highly recommended, powerful, and winsome book.

Chesterton is an author and thinker that I would love to love -- yet I find him challenging and not nearly as entertaining as many do. I do enjoy many quotations of his work. 

"A Christian is only restricted in the same sense an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity to be false and still be a Christian; and an atheist cannot think atheism to be false and still be an atheist". 

"The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialists world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane". 

In this age of rampant virtue signalling it is hard to beat; "The modern age is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad".  In reading history, it is entertaining to see that it is always "modern"', which is naturally true.  It is always "modern". "Wokeism", Identity Politics, Mask Shaming and a host of other "modern" maladies are exactly moralism, puritanism, and The Scarlet Letter. The more mankind runs away, the more he runs into himself. 

It is a well loved work and I understand why, it is just "not my cup of tea" and I lament that fact.

 

The Denial Of Death, Earnst Becker

 https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/06/books/reading-and-writing-life-before-death.html

Like the NY Times reviewer, this was the 2nd time through the book for me, with the other being long ago. The book was published in 1973 when it was still permissible to claim homosexuality, gender dysphoria, coprophilia, pedophilia, and necrophilia as "perversions" rather than "identity".  Even in 1982, when the review was done, such a book was allowed to be published and used in college classes, as it was in my philosophy class.  Surprisingly,  it is still available on Kindle, and even hardcover on Amazon if you are willing to part with $621! How long before it is banned?

Becker knows that the problem of life is death, thus the necessity of  the  "causa-sui" (self caused) project. Most people try to deny death by distraction with work, pleasure, drugs, other nostrums and addictions. Some choose art or beauty. Page 33, "The ultimate horror for Swift was the fact that the sublime, the beautiful, and the divine are inextricable from basic animal functions."  

in one of Swift's poems, a man in love with a beautiful woman laments: 

No wonder how I lost my wits; 

Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits!

Another common way of putting this regular reminder that we are physical beings with ugly smelly bodily functions is as Montaigne put it; "On the highest throne in the world, man sits on his ass". 

Mr. Becker asks us to be, or to try to be, heroic, and while this is a large order, it can be argued that we are constitutionally pointed in that direction. Also, it would seem that life is hardly worth all the anxiety, the frustration and the inevitable humiliation unless there is a hope of glory. Our movement toward glory may be a response to what Mr. Becker calls the "suction of infinity",  which I take to be a rather sophisticated substitute for the traditional notion of heaven.

So, somehow we need to deal with this most truly existential of problems.  Kierkegaard followed the Augustinian/Lutheran tradition said that education is facing up to this fact. Luther said, "I say die - taste death as though it were present". 

Becker is writing a secular supposedly "scientific" work, so he can't quote the bible, and I can: 

Romans 6:4-9:

6 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

"Science" denies the possibility of the metaphysical, which is why the book is a history of at best partial attempts to supposedly "deny" the stark fact of death. 

On 151, Becker says; "As philosophers have long noted, it is as though the heart of nature is pulsating in it's own joyful self-expansion". Indeed, J. Scott Turner has written a marvelous book on the reality of "nature pulsating in it's own joyful self-expansion" -- it is better known as LIFE! 

On page 198, we see Beckers summary of Kierkegaard's conclusion: "If neurosis is sin and not disease, than the only thing that can "cure" it is a world-view, some kind of affirmative collective ideology in which the person can perform the living drama of his acceptance as a creature". 

To put it more simply, we are BOTH saints(spiritual beings) and sinners (material beings). What we seek is transcendence -- once provided in the west by having and practicing Christian faith. Now tragically attempted by worshiping false gods of material possessions, wealth, political "wokeness", academic degrees, "science". etc 

On 215, we see; "A constant danger in science is that each gain risks abandoning ground that was once securely annexed. Nowhere is this more true than in the "role theories" of mental illness threaten to abandon the Freudian formulation based on bodily facts". 

"Bodily facts" = materialism. The assertion that everything, including us, is ONLY "stuff", the only thing to worship is the idea of "progress" -- it is getting "better" every day until ultimately the sun becomes a red giant and the earth becomes a cinder, or somehow we move to space and only cease to exist when the universe cools to absolute zero, or compresses to a mathematical point in the "big crunch". I have faith that if/when one of those things happen, I'll have no less time in heaven than the day I died. 

On 25, he paraphrases Kierkegaard and states; "faith is the hardest thing; he placed himself between belief and faith, unable to make the jump. The jump doesn't depend on man at all - there's the rub; faith is a matter of grace." 

Luther would agree. It is a GIFT from God through the fully human and fully God person of Jesus. 

For non-Christians, the book will ultimately be a disappointment. It is impossible for a human to succeed on their own to deny the fact of death. They can CLAIM that they are OK, but even in the case of Freud that results are bad -- irrational phobias, rage, mental illness,  addictions, etc  

The last sentence of this causa-sui(the search for immortality) project for a secularist is: "The most that any of us can seem to do is to fashion something - an object or ourselves and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak. to the life force". 

Order or chaos, God or the Devil. Choose you this day whom you will serve! It is the ultimate eternal "choice". 

Statement Of Faith Post Election 2020

I post something like this every once in awhile hoping I'm interpreting Luke 12:8 correctly "I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God." Naturally, given my strange brain, it might mean, "Bill, I want to make it clear that I acknowledge you as a bad example".  

After brain surgery and multiple seizures, God has finally shown me I control NOTHING. "I must decrease, Christ must increase" ... I have faith that my life in Christ will go on eternally, and fully agree that eternity could be less than a breath away.

 Christ says “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6 "Whatever" is an eternal mistake. America turned from God, so we have no peace -- and we will not have it unless we return to God. "So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. " Romans 8:6 

For the nation, as Reagan said: "If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, we will be a nation gone under". The idea that we can "fix it" without God is killing America.

Practice Christian faith. Christ is the eternal anchor. Without him, we have neither peace nor hope.

The Riddle of Joy

 https://www.amazon.com/Riddle-Joy-G-K-Chesterton-Lewis/dp/0802836658

Probably of most interest as an anchor for finding a bit about excellent works by both Chesterton and Lewis, however useful in itself. 

My favorite find from the book ... something I think I've heard before, but did not adequately  understand: 

In Augustine's sermon "On The Pure Love of God", he says:

"Imagine God appeared to you and said he would make a deal with you. That he would give you everything you wished, everything your heart desired except one thing. You could have anything you imagine,  nothing would be impossible for you, nothing would be sinful or forbidden But you shall never see my face." Why Augustine askes, did a terrible chill creep over your heart, unless there is a love for God, a desire for God? In fact, if you wouldn't accept that deal, you really do love God above all things. You just gave up the whole world ... and more, for God." 

A bit later: "Once again, love has instructed understanding. The fear of the Lord has been the beginning of wisdom". 

To begin to understand the importance of the "Face of God", reading the "Face of God" by Scruton would be time well spent. Scruton covers the "subject / object" issue very well. Why is the experience of the face of another human so special? Through that "little i", our soul detects a glimpse of the ultimate "I AM". 

Modern man's desire to "be God", through science, through technology, through "progress" to some ill-defined utopia (more likely to be Hell if he arrives) ... ANYTHING BUT GOD! Because in his heart he knows he loves God and his very nature desperately wants to year "well done, my good and faithful servant". However, like a 2 year old, he wants to "DO IT MYSELF"! 

Even though his endless searching is increasingly obviously only getting him depression, addiction, suicide, broken families, hatred, tribalism, etc ... and at his life's end, the terrible separation from the only source of life and joy. 

A worthy book, but I would recommend reading especially Lewis first, and also some key Chesterton. I'm fairly well versed on Lewis, this book convinced me I'm woefully ignorant on Chesterton,