"...like a tree..." (Notes to a Vagabond Generation)

"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly.... [rather] his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by a river.... The ungodly are not so but are like the chaff, which the wind drives away." Ps. 1:1-6

The bogeyman of my generation.

All the counsels of the ungodly wither. They are without substance, for the counsel of God alone is all-substance. This is another one of those radical, rebellious notions that offend the finer sensibilities of my vagabond generation. We prefer to "keep our options open," avoid ruts, and escape "comfort zones." We fear stagnation; we fear petrification. We fear consistency and coherence, and what is more stagnant and consistent than a tree? It spends its whole life in one spot, gripping tighter to its beloved safe zone. It will never know the freedom and personal growth of the uprooted life. Of course, an uprooted tree no longer grows at all, but that is hardly the point to us. Carpe diem is the point, and we shall seize it even with our dying breath.

"Viva la freedom!"

All our romanticized idealism over "freedom" or "liberation" or "openness" does not change the hard, common sense fact that an uprooted tree is still a dead tree. You can replant it with each uprooting, but the continual upheaval will be enough to kill it eventually. Trees are meant to stay put, to take root where they are. The stability of its location, the consistency of its nourishment, the coherence of the operation of its parts---all this "stagnation" is its strength, its very life. If that is stagnation, then perhaps we should all be a little more "stagnate."

"All the earth and sky are mine."

It is not stagnation, however, and that is the single greatest error made by my generation: we equate stability and consistency with stagnation and death rather than life and strength. God certainly sees it as life and strength. That is why He uses the image of a tree in this psalm, and it is a perfect image. A tree is a paradox. It never moves, and yet it's always moving. It remains where it is planted, yet it consistently grows further upwards and downwards, gripping the earth tighter and tighter with a myriad of brown fingers coiling from a great knotted fist, and stretching into the sky higher and higher with a multitude of branches unfolding like outstretched hands holding a rich supply of leaves and seeds and fruits and flowers. It grows simultaneously more entrenched and more outrageous, outrageous because it is entrenched.

Dante visits "the liberated."

That same tree-paradox is the life of those who build them- selves on the true, substantive counsel of God. The more they entrench themselves in the truth, the more substance they gain, and the more outrageous and lavish and wondrous their life grows. Our vagabond generation does not understand this. We prefer to hobo it from one patch of ground to the next (in order to superficially "experience its culture" or whatever), and in the end our rootlessness leaves us tossed about by every wave of doctrine or thought or fashion. Like chaff on the wind, we are unceasingly restless and aimless, never finding home.

And all the while, we who are rootless cast a pitying eye to those who have been planted in God's truth, assuming that their immobility will be their destruction; but that assumption will be our destruction, for immobility can be a proof of life just as much as of death. Proof that the tree has been planted by a river. Why should it move? Why would it move? "To whom shall we go?" said Peter to Jesus. "You have the words of life" (John 6:68). By His words we are fed, and by His words we sink deep into infinite earth and stretch high into infinite sky. Again, why would we move? We have found the source of life.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Evils of Freedom (as explained by an original orthodox rebel)

"The earth is also defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, the curse has devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate." Is. 24:5-6

"Rules are made to be broken," or so goes the cliche. It is inaccurate, of course. For starters, no one actually believes it. What we actually believe is that the rules of others are meant to be broken, but you'd better not touch mine! We all have our private codifications that are untouchable, unquestionable, and binding for everyone. Thus, we are all hypocrites in our rebellions, for we are only rebels to others. No one is a rebel to themselves.

This hypocrisy is a particular mark of our own age. Every day and in every way we are encouraged further towards some vague notion of freedom: freedom to express ourselves, to find ourselves, to be ourselves and be true to ourselves. The result is that there is freedom of expression but no freedom of correction. You may express yourself as you please, but no one has the right to suggest that your expression (and your "self'") may be unwholesome or even destructive to you and others. Such suggestions are oppressive, mean-spirited, and the way of the bigot, or so we are told by those who are apparently free to correct us.

Unfortunately, when qualifications are made, the hypocrisy only gets worse, viz., becomes confused and confusing. "You may do as you please as long as you don't hurt anyone." If I may do as I please, then why can I not hurt anyone? Will you now plead for absolutist morality to bolster your relativism, like flying buttresses for a fortress of air? The whole thing is ridiculous because it is groundless by its own logic. If I am free (and encouraged!) to be myself, and "my self" just happens to be a violent monstrosity (or simply has a proclivity for deception and manipulation or any other less spectacular cruelty), then who are you to limit my freedom with your narrow-minded notions of social contract? Am I free or not free? Or am I free in one way but not in another? Which? Why? How? Exceptions can prove a rule, but in this case exceptions only complicate the rule into oblivion. It is no wonder that common folk (being fed their daily indoctrination of freedom through their iPods, streamed videos, and game systems) don't really think on these things: a moment's scrutiny would send the whole house of cards tumbling into the wind.

At this point, some of my readers may be annoyed with me. "Look, we don't know why we draw the line here and not there, okay? Are we not free to draw lines as we please? And is it so bad that we are more tolerant of someone's fashion sense than their murdering someone? It's just common sense." It is a fair frustration to have, and like any sane person I don't want to be a bother, except with things that are bothersome. And here is what I see as bothersome: the so-called "freedom" that is the foundation for all of this hypocrisy and confusion. We have an unhealthy love of freedom. We have poisoned our own well, and what once may have been a virtue is now most certainly a vice.

If you think this is about politics (about candidate "X" or legislation "Y"), it's not. This is a moral issue, not a political one. Politically, you may be a liberal or conservative or points in between. Morally, however, we are all libertines. We all inherently distrust rules and authority and the order they bring. We instinctively consider them to be oppressive and suffocating, and consequently the one and only desire is to be as free as possible. But it is a destructive desire, for this one, radical reason: order is the only grounds for all good things, including freedom.

That is "common sense," for those of you who are flabbergasted at the moment, so allow me to repeat myself: there is nothing good without order. There is no freedom without laws (like "the right to bear arms") to keep you safe from tyrants and robbers alike. There is no possibility of peace without the confines of civilization and all its "oppressive" accoutrements: a police force, traffic laws, court systems, and common civility and custom. There is not even the possibility of fun, for without rules (hard, binding rules) there is no game, not even Calvinball. And if you think you can disprove all of this, then you have already failed, for there is no argumentation at all without the cold bigotry of the laws of logic.

All of our modern ruin (from social decadence and political corruption to school shootings and abortion on demand) can be traced to a confusion of terms. We equate "order" for tyranny and then mistake anarchy for "freedom". Our slobbering lover-affair with limitlessness has taken its toll (and many lives). We have forgotten old wisdom, the wisdom of balance and moderation, of the simple notion of the "point between extremes"; for order, truly beneficent and wholesome order, is the point between extremes, the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. The extremes of law gone mad and freedom gone mad. It is a truth as old as Plato, as old as the Bible: when the good king rules, all is well; when the bad king rules, or when no man rules, the city of oppression will fall, and the city of confusion will break down. Then all joy will be darkened, and the mirth of the land will be gone (Is. 24:10-11). Peace and prosperity is found in order alone, in the beauty, the κοσμος, of a thing rightly put together, for only when every bone has found its socket can the whole man stand.

We must not be deceived: democracy is not divine. God is not a democrat, and although Christianity (and God) values every individual person as a unique creation, it cannot be called a democratic institution. If it is anything, it is monarchical, in service to the King and Lord of Heaven and Earth. It still believes in freedom, but as a means and not an end. Freedom is to be the road to a greater glory: telling the story of God and living in His righteousness, for the Christian does not live for themselves but for their Beloved Belover.

It is love that is the key, for love is the foundational principle for true beneficent order. For love of the people, the king rules rightly. For the love of existence, God made all things. For the love of our "selves," He submitted Himself to the limitations of flesh and blood and the political claptrap of men, because God is not a democrat. He is a lover. He is Love, and from His Love springs the order of all things, and without His Love there is no order. No freedom. No peace. No-thing, except the dark with its weeping and gnashing of teeth, for in the darkness outside the kingdom there is only the wasteland, where all hope is abandoned, and all joy and mirth fade forever away into puffs of smoke and ash.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Foucault VS St. Paul (a fragment of a debate on freedom)

Foucault: But can you not see that all discursive formulations hide plays at power? Truth is the illusion that we give to control, and control is the contrivance that we give to oppression so that it may claim objectivity. And every claim or call to "objectivity" (so-called) is merely an attempt to draw the living, fragile, pulsating interplay of all phenomena around a single center. That is the very architecture of tyranny: when the immobility of structures inhibit and demarcate the living openness of life, when closed systems attempt to silence and banish the existence and voice of differences and negations. This must end if we are to know the true, dark freedom of our "selves" (so-called). We must suppress the suppressors and subvert their narratives: narratives of race and gender and class, narratives used as the grindstones of patriarchs and imperialists to efface all peoples and press them into prescribed molds. We must take the hammer of discursive analysis, ever skeptical and critical, and free the world from its subjection to transcendence, its reduction to teleology, and its imprisonment to totalization. We must break down, tear down, inact a willful and purposeful fragmentation whose operation is an endless decentering that leaves no privilege to any center or origin. Only in this, this dispersion and scattering, this transgression of all boundaries, can we hope to find final liberation.

St. Paul: And who told you thus? To what wisdom did you learn such foolishness? To what law did you submit to that told you of the annulment of any and all law? Can you not see that your counsel is darkened with words that lack knowledge? For if you had read the scriptures, or if you knew the power of God, or even if you had properly read the great pagan Plato, then you would have known the truth. You would have known that tyranny cannot be answered by either democracy or anarchy but only monarchy. Wise, benevolent monarchy, ruled by a king who truly knows better than you and who truly seeks your good. And I say to you that there is such a king alive today. A King of kings who is all-Wisdom and all-Goodness, for He is those things and will always be those things, for He was those things even before the foundation of the world and all its imperfect discourses. His name is Jesus, and His title is Christ, and it is in His Lordship and our subjection to it that all oppression fails and our sad divisions cease. For in Him there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. In Him there is neither elitism nor populism, nor racism (from any race), sexism (from either sex), or classism (from any class), for all have found their identity in the objectivity and reality of His preeminence. All are equal when all bow at the name of Jesus. All voices are heard when every tongue confesses that Christ is Lord. Unhappy creature! There is no peace nor love nor joy nor hope in tearing all things down into fragments. Such deconstruction is merely destruction, the way of the Destroyer. But the way of Christ is creation, a building up of a living, unified body of many members into His real, objective, absolute, and essential headship. There is no other way under heaven whereby men can be saved or set free.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

 

Those Who Are Different (practical Christianity as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"...for you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that we should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.... Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.... For so is the will of God, that with well-doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men --- as free, but not using your liberty as a cloak for maliciousness, but as the servants of God."
I Pet. 2:9, 11, 15-16

In chapter 1, Peter set down a precedent that we (as Christians) are to be different because we are different (vs. 15 & 23). He then spends the first part of chapter 2 unpacking that difference and then the rest of the book on putting that difference into practice. Though his applications are somewhat unique to his time, the precedent and subsequent unpacking are universal.

The first thing that the precedent entails is our purpose, which is laid down in 2:9 when Peter says that we should "show forth the praises" of God. In the Greek, "show forth the praises" is "aretas exangeilhte," and it literally means to revel/proclaim the heroic and mighty deeds of someone (specifically God, in this context). Herein is our purpose as those who are different: we are to tell God's story, especially in regard to our own lives. He has done heroic and mighty deeds, namely rescuing us from the kingdom of darkness and translating us into the kingdom of His Son (Col. 1:13). We will not hide such things away, but rather we will show them to the generation to come, proclaiming the praises of the Lord, and His strength, and His wonderful works that He has done (Ps. 78:2-4). Thus is our purpose: to proclaim God to be the hero that He is, both at our salvation and in our day-to-day sanctification.

The second thing that the precedent entails is directly related to the first. It is our identity, which is laid down in 2:16 where Peter says, "As free, but not using your liberty as a cloak for maliciousness, but as the servants of God." In the Greek, "free" is "eleutheros," and it was the word for a "freeman". In the ancient world, a "freeman" was someone who had been a slave or debtor but had been set free by someone (usually their master). Thus, even though they were legally free, they always considered themselves indebted to the one who had freed them, living to freely serve them out of love and gratitude. Herein is our identity as those who are different: we are the freemen of God, who has set us free not for freedom's sake, but so that in our freedom we might live unto righteousness (I Peter 2:24b; Rom. 6:18), which is the truest expression of our gratitude and love as well as the truest proclamation of who God is: the Righteous One who has set us free.

Perhaps now you are beginning to see the whole picture. We are the freemen of God, and as such we are the "servants of God," and we live to show forth the mighty, heroic deeds that our Lord has done, viz., saving us from the power of Sin and the wrath of God. That is who we are and what we do, being those who are different. We are free, but our freedom is a means and not an end, a means to give ourselves in love to the one who freed us, and to praise Him, and to show forth His praises to those who are as we once were: enslaved to Sin in dungeons of darkness, never knowing the freedom to love and serve God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Boil to Rags, Part 6: Free Indeed (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

(See the first post in the series here.)

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him...." John 3:16

Faith is the very heartbeat of existence. The world may doubt faith, but it can never live without faith, for faith is trust in action, a very common and yet a very magnificent occurrence. It touches everything, from the flowers that trust the sky for rain to the child who trusts their parents without fear or question to the very heart of the Godhead Three: their perfect communion breeding perfect knowledge, and perfect knowledge leaping out in perfect trust. He trusts in His will, and into His hands He commits His spirit. So you see, from the highest to the lowest, faith is trust; furthermore, it is trust in another, for where there is no other, then there is no faith. Faith in Self is not faith at all but the very essence of Sin, and what is of Sin is not of faith. Likewise, faith in faith is not faith but foolishness, for faith is an action and not a being, and an action turned back in on itself is aimless and therefore lost. Thus, it is not good that faith should be alone.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without trust, we dishonor Him, claiming Him to be unworthy of our lives and our love. Yet we abandon ourselves to everything else: to pleasure and power, to dominance and doubt, to money and markets, to self and satisfaction, to work and causes and fads and all the unstable chaff of this world. We abandon ourselves anew every day to a myriad of vaporous lovers, but we will neither submit nor surrender to Love Himself. Oh, we will disguise our fear and arrogance by calling it false names like rationalism or "healthy" skepticism or "humble" agnosticism, but we are all liars and self-deceived. Our skepticism is always selective, and we will always trust in our doubts as long as they will keep us both safe from the living God and free for our own will.

Yet the doubting soul is never free, for freedom belongs to faith alone. Doubt pulls one into the self: our lusts and desires and will to dominate our own life. It is a vacuous narcissism that pulls all inward, making a cage out of its own desire. But faith knows no cages, for it is an ever-expanding thrust outward, breaking barriers and walls and bars, discovering newer and newer undiscovered countries and canvases of souls. Never stopping until it touches and is caught up in that Soul whose very essence is faith, an endless giving and receiving, trusting and loving. For in God alone our faith find a resting place where its movements never cease, and thus it is ever-satisfied.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012