On Evil and Gay Marriage (and Gun-Ownership, and the Death Penalty, and Hell, and...)

The reason the average discussion about anything goes nowhere is because everyone always talks about the thing at hand rather than the things assumed. What I mean is that we always discuss the "topics" but never our assumptions that under-gird and give life to those topics. It's like having weeds in your garden and deciding whether to break out the weed-eater or pull them up by the roots. Most of us break out the weed-eater: it's easier, takes less time, makes a glorious racket, and is good for a laugh when the casual passerby is barraged with vegetative shrapnel.

Pulling up by the root takes too much work. It's a hands-on, dirty, intimate process. We have to get on our knees and take each weed one at a time, coming to grips with their unique shapes and challenges, finding the right amount of leverage to unseat them, and finding the right consolation when we fail to yank the suckers fully free from the earth. It's all too messy and involved, but we'll never really take care of the weeds if we don't deal with the roots. That's what's wrong with the majority of our so-called "discussions" or "conversations": we're all whacking each other with weed-eaters, while the roots remain untouched.

Take any "hot-button" issue and you'll see what I mean, like gay marriage for example. Everyone makes everything and anything out of it: it's about the degradation of culture, or equal rights for equal people, or legislating morality, or protecting our children, or protecting our liberty, or freedom of conscience, or love, or hate, or whatever additional buzzwords are floating about, clouding up the debate like a pack of flies. The truth is that gay marriage is about none of those things. Those things are a part of it, they spring naturally from it, but they're not what it's about, what it's fundamentally built on. And what it's fundamentally built on is whether or not there is anything "fundamental" at all.

Is gender a fundamental reality or an arbitrary construction? Is there a fundamental reality out there? How can we know? To what authority do we reference? Is there such an authority? How do we know it/them/him/her? These are the questions that gay marriage is really asking. These are the presuppositions that inform the debate. These are the roots. Gay marriage is not about whether morality is on the decline; it's about whether or not objective meaning is an illusion we've created. It's not about whether we should let inequality exist; it's about whether or not nihilism is true.

Subjectivist? Nay! Subject-abyss.

If you are pro-gay marriage, then at bottom you hold that (at the very least) gender and marriage are empty concepts, and the only authority to say what they are is the subject(s) participating in it. You may not put it in those exact words, but that's exactly what a presupposition is, i.e., pre-supposed, assumed before any words. You assume gender and marriage under an individualistic, subjectivist, nihilist framework and let the rest roll from there. Likewise, if you are anti-gay marriage, then at bottom you hold that (at the very least) gender and marriage are not empty concepts, that they have fundamental, essential realities, and that conformity to those realities is the only way to truly live and enjoy them. Again, you may not have put as much into words, and you may not even be sure what authority gave those concepts their essential reality and meaning, but you hold to the existence of those realities (and authority) nonetheless.

Every topic or "hot-button" issue has their roots somewhere, and the only real way to have a real debate about these things (and not simply a shouting match or a group hug) is to deal with the roots. If you want to discuss gay marriage, then don't start with the shrubbery of equality or morality. Start with the roots of authority and reality: is there an objective reality to things, and is there an authority that tells us what that reality is and is not? Until that debate happens, everything else is so much window-dressing in a never-ending flame war.

By Jove, it's all linked!

I have found this to be true in my own discussion or engagement with certain topics and issues. I find a strange collaboration amongst things that seem at first to be disparate from each other. Somehow, a collection of unrelated items was all along involved in a conspiracy within me. I found to my shock that all my separate shrubs belonged to the same root system. For example: gun-ownership, the death penalty, and Hell are all things I have opinions on, things that everyone has some kind of opinion on. The thing is, I thought that they were each (by themselves) an issue unto itself, when in fact they all belonged to the same source. They all rested on the same fundamental assumptions.

Those assumptions had to do with evil. Your opinion on whether or not men and women should own a weapon, whether or not certain crimes are punishable by death, and whether or not a just and loving God would send/condemn/confine certain people to eternal punishment all stem from this one source, this one question: what is evil? What does it look like? How do we recognize it? And how ought we to respond to it? Believe it or not, your stance on self-defense, capital punishment, and eternal damnation all rest on this hinge: what is your "stance" on evil? What assumptions about it do you have?

"I find your lack of evil disturbing."

Allow me to speak for myself in order to produce an example. Here is at least one thing I believe about evil: that it comes in many different shades and intensities, including the darkest shades and worst intensities. I believe, in other words, that there is such a thing as irredeemable, irrevocable evil, of a place where a moral frontier has been crossed that cannot be uncrossed, where the downward spiral has reached terminal velocity and cannot be recalled. Not to be cliche or hang my laurels on a worn-out nail, but when Alfred described the Joker as a man "who doesn't want anything logical," who "can't be bought, bullied, reasoned to, or negotiated with," and "just wants to watch the world burn," I believe him. I believe he is absolutely right. There are such men (and women) out there, and they are not as rare as we suppose.

This is one of my assumptions about evil, and it is why I am in favor of gun-ownership and the death penalty, and why I believe in a place called Hell. Not because I necessarily "like" those things or are glad they exist, but because I know there are certain persons to whom there is no other solution or answer but an extreme one. There is no forgiveness or mercy or grace that will turn them, no therapy or accommodation or understanding that will change them, no compromise or appeasement that will stop them. A line has been crossed, and they will not turn back. What else is there that we can do to or for them? What else is there for even God to do? If they will not be forgiven, if they will not receive help, if they will not stop, then they must be stopped. I believe in such an evil as that, an evil in which our only legitimate response is to stop it by whatever means necessary.

This is one of the reasons I lose all patience with the anti-death penalty argument that says, "If we kill them then we are no different than them." The idea is completely absurd; the very reason we seek to put them to death is precisely because we are "different" than them. We seek their death because we belong to a moral sphere; they sought death and destruction because they stepped out of and beyond all moral spheres. We want them dead because we care too much about the lives of others in our communities (and even our prisons); they wanted others dead and destroyed because they cared nothing about them at all. There is a universe of difference between us and them, between the whole of common sense humanity and the occasional degenerates who seek our slaughter. If there truly was "no difference" between the two of us, then we wouldn't even be having this debate, for we wouldn't even call their actions wrong or punishable in the first place. The very idea of punishment can only come from a moral order and those who adhere to it. Thus, our similarity is merely superficial: the shrubs seemed identical, but their roots are miles away, in different depths and other soils. 

Because I assume these things about evil, it not only shapes my own stance but also my thoughts on the stances of others. If someone is anti-gun ownership, anti-death penalty, anti-Hell, or (what is more often the case) all of the above, I find myself assuming (because of my presupposition) that they have an incorrect view of evil, that their view of evil is skewed, that it is somehow lesser or weaker than mine. Now, I may be right or wrong in having that assumption, and I may be being unfair to those who disagree with me, but for now it is what it is: the roots have affected the shrub and its relationship to other shrubs.

...seems legit.

The point of all this blather is this: any debate that does not deal with the fundamental assumptions that under-gird our ideas will dissolve into shadow-boxing at best. I'm even willing to bet that most of the stupidity and incivility that reeks across our social and political realms like rot on a tree trunk could be avoided (for the most part) if we would actually get to the real point(s) behind our myriad "topics" and "issues" and "platforms," if we would get to the real heart of the matter. There we find what is really at stake, what we really believe, and (perhaps more importantly) who we really are, for our beliefs spring from who we are. Like Jesus said, "Out of the heart" comes all that makes us who we are, for good or ill (Matt. 15:18-20), and we would do well to cease from squawking at each other and take some time to first look at our self square in the eye. Then, perhaps, we can look at others in the eye as well.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Homily 47: For the Love of God (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I have formed this people for Myself; they shall show forth my praise." Is. 43:21

The universe dances for the love of God, and by the love of God, for by the love of God were all things created, flying forth from the bounteous, rapturous joy of His Being like light from the sun, like sparks from the furnace, like foam from the sea. We were built from love and for love: from the love of God most glorious so that we may love God most glorious and all His glorious creatures. This is the true way of worship: not in words or song or dance but love, love that is not less than and yet is greater than all expression. True, our halting metaphors are ever-inadequate to pronounce our great purpose, yet we cannot help ourselves. We must sing, we must say, we must do, for the aching desire will not leave us be. Our bones burn until we prophesy the love of God to us, to all, to every one and thing.

Herein is love: not that we created ourselves, but that God created us, and recreated us. He is in the old things and the new things, and newer and newer things still, renewed in deeper and starker shades of glory and grace. There is no bottom to Him, and yet there is no bottom without Him. The dark is endless, the void deep where His love is not, where all things are not. Outside of His love is No-thing, and those who turn to its noths will feel the burn of endless exile, rejection by and of the summit of all light and desire. Who are we to neglect so great a salvation?  If we would be perfect as God is perfect, holy as He is holy, then we should abide by the summation of his commandments and law: love God, and necessarily love others (Matt. 22:37-40; Gal. 5:14).

But we are evil creatures indeed, for no one seeks after holiness, after righteousness, after God. No one seeks the way of worship, no not one. We have all of us turned astray, to our own way. Falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of our own isolation, our terrible loneliness, hard-won by our own spite and hell-born ignorance. God above, most brilliant and profoundest Being of the Deep Light, cleave our minds with Your truth, our selves with Your Selves. Strike us with Your love, your wild and reckless love; like a flash and crash of lightning against a dead tree, make your mark against our bark and spark the fire that burns towards Heaven once again. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

A Continuing Defense of Glory (from another Original Orthodox Rebel)

Continuing the premise laid down in this post, here is an excerpt from "Hymn 1" of St. Symeon's Hymns of Divine Eros. It not only speaks of the reception into glory awaiting the faithful, but also the rejection by glory that awaits the unbelieving.

[T]hus are those who have stood by God Who glorified them:

they persevere, astounded by the excess of glory

and by the endless addition of divinity's splendor.

For the end will be eternal progress,

the condition of additional, endless fulfillment,

and shall make an attainment of the Unattainable, and God,

of Whom no one can get enough, shall become the source of satisfaction for all.

But the full measure of Him and the glory of His light

will be an abyss of progress and an endless beginning;

and just as those who have Christ transformed within them

stand by Him Who shines unapproachably,

so also the end in them becomes a beginning of glory.

And---in order to make the idea more clear to you---

in the end they shall have a beginning and in the beginning an end.

Understand me: one who is overflowing needs no addition,

and runners do not overtake the end of the infinite.

For if this sky that we see passes away,

as well as the earth and all things in the earth, then seek what I say:

it will be the attainment of the place where you find fulfillment.

[...]

This All is filled with the divine divinity

And so those who have a share in Him, those who dwell in Him,

how may they embrace all of Him, and so be satisfied?

How, tell me, would they grasp the end of the endless?

It is impossible and by all means impracticable.

For thus neither for the saints still in the body,

nor for those departed to God

can such a thought at all penetrate them.

For they also are covered by the light of divine glory;

they are enlightened, and they shine,

and they revel in all these things.

And they truly know as though by every certainty

that their perfection shall be endless,

and the progress of their glory shall be everlasting.

I wonder where those who fall away from God stand,

those who stand afar off from Him Who is everywhere?

[...]

These also shall certainly be within the All,

but they shall be outside the divine light

and certainly outside of God;

for just like those who do not see when the sun shines,

even if they are illuminated all around,

they finish their lives outside the light.

They are separated from the sun
by perception and contemplation.

So also is the light of the Triune Divivity in the All,

and in the middle of the light the sinners are enclosed in darkness,

not seeing, not having any divine perception at all,

but burning in their conscience,

and being condemned, they shall have unspeakable calamity,

and an unutterable suffering unto eternity.

 

The Decayed (The Six Shades of Sin, Part VI)

"Woe unto them...who justify the wicked for a reward and take away the righteousness of the innocent!" Is. 5:22-23

Justice is a popular virtue these days, and injustice is an equally popular bogeyman. Properly understood, justice is based on balance: rendering unto everyone what is rightfully due to them. It is an error, however, to then simply equate injustice with imbalance. There is more to it than that, for imbalance is merely the effect of a more fundamental cause: corruption. That is the meaning of Isaiah reiterating immoderation at this point: "Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink..." (vs. 22). Injustice is a product of a prior corruption, the final effects of far deeper decay, and the sequence of this decay has already been made clear by the five previous "woes" in this passage.

From the endless void of greed spawns the reckless imbalance(!) of immoderation, which in turn leads to the greatest of all immoderation: the hubris of impiety. Once we consider ourselves to be equal to or greater than God and His law, the crooked unreality of immorality is a necessary consequent, and consequent to that is the paranoid stronghold of pride, for what else is that fear but a failure to see clearly? Finally, from there injustice blooms, the rear-guard of all moral decay, the crown jewel of that deadly diadem. The rot began long ago, and the decay is inevitable (and in worse cases, final). If woe is upon those caught in the net of sin, then greater woe is upon those who underestimate the insidiousness of Sin itself. This is the great strength of Christian ethical thought: Sin is not doing bad yet pleasurable things. "Bad things" are merely a superficiality, like the skin to a skull. The harder substance is beneath the surface. Sin is not bad doing but bad being. It is an inherent corruption and rottenness, a cancerous and infectious malady of the soul.

Both pagan philosophers and church fathers spoke of an "ascent" of loves, i.e., progressing upwards from the love of lesser things to the love of higher things until you reach the highest of all: God. But there is a descent to match the ascent, a downward spiral to match the upward flight. The true terror of this is that while in the ascent every step upward makes it harder and harder to take a step back, so every step downward makes it harder to step back up again. Glory is alluring; so is evil. "Sin is behoovely," said Lady Julian. It has its siren songs and seductive wares, and every step into its domain is another step deeper into the mire. At some point, there is no return. The descent into Hell is a consummation as irrevocable as the ascent to God. That is the horror and great darkness of Sin.

Sin is that dark, however, so that Grace may be all the brighter. The room is made pitch black so that the light may be like lightning. Herein lies another great strength of Christian thought: we are all of us born the sons and daughters of Hell. We need not concern ourselves with a descent into the mire; we have descended. We need not worry about dying that death; in Adam, we have all already died (I Cor. 15:22). We need not obsess with how to rise or fall; we have already fallen, and we are beyond the aid of men, but not beyond all aid. There is another who descended into Hell, one who was like us and yet not like us. Jesus came, born like a man and died like a man, plunging head-first into death, the dread offspring of Sin. But when He made that plunge, it was like a spark falling into an oil pit. The dungeon could not help but flame with light.

To all who reach out to Him, He laid hold of us and we of Him. And by that mystic, sweet communion, out of the pit we rise, not by might nor by power but by the love of Him who loved us (Rom. 5:6-8; Col. 1:12-14; I John 4:9-10). Sin is behoovely, but all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, for grace is greater than all our sin and is able to save to the uttermost of its decay (Heb. 7:18-25). If the woes of Sin are great, it is so the blessings of Christ may be greater, for darkness can do nothing against the light but magnify its brilliance.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Part of Our Inconsolable Secret (thoughts by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

I like to break up the monotony every once in a while, especially when I'm doing one of my infamous "series". So here, for your reading pleasure, is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' essay "The Weight of Glory" (from the book by the same name). I do this merely to tease you, as you should go buy the book immediately if you are one of those shame-faced few who have yet to purchase it.

If I had rejected the authoritative and scriptural image of glory and stuck obstinately to the vague desire which was, at the outset, my only pointer to heaven, I could have seen no connection at all between that desire and the Christian promise [of heaven]. But now, having followed up what seemed puzzling and repellent in the sacred books, I find, to my great surprise, looking back, that the connection is perfectly clear. Glory, as Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire and indeed reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed. By ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what I really wanted.

When I attempted, a few minutes ago [earlier in the essay], to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as "the journey homeward to habitual self." You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: "Nobody marks us."

A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being "noticed" by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (I Cor. 8:3). It is a strange promise. Does not God know all things at all times? But it is dreadfully reechoed in another passage of the New Testament. There we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, "I never knew you. Depart from me."

In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside---repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities. Apparently, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.