MATHETΩN

I had a realization today while reading the news. Australia has had a tie in elections to parliament — between the major parties, I mean — and the reporter blithely informs us that this is “the worst possible outcome for the markets”. The economist she interviews, however, says only that the stock markets may drop by as much as a cent in the next few weeks. But here is the realization I had: what a joke to relish it is that the Devil has nowadays got even opinions monetized. He no longer needs to say, Do this or that and I will reward you, but merely, Think this or that and I will reward you. Of course his reward is death, but this is no less a joke to relish.

How are you advertising your chastity?

This talisman the Evangelicals flaunt, that they have said words to make Jesus their personal savior, is easily debunked with a little observation.

So Jesus you have contracted as your own personal rescuer? Then what are these bills for house insurance, health insurance? What is this record of your having called the fire department, the police? On this date you begged your banker for a loan. At this meeting you demanded a teacher improve your daughter. You have turned to counselors to keep your marriage and to lawyers gainfully to end it. Every November, you petition governments with votes, and every May, you hang a flag hoping an Army will remember you.

Everywhere I read a Christian writing about God, these days, she seeks miracles. She dwells upon whether God may have intervened in her life in some forgotten way or whether God can be made to intervene in her life in future. Have Christians never read, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign”?

Yesterday I even read a pastor declare that, if only he were faced with an event from no explicable cause, he would find it easy to believe God the cause of it. Could he be less logical?

God planned the universe. It revolves at his will by his laws. Were he always to be crossing himself with miracles, surely this would cast doubt on his plan’s prudence.

(And what is so special about a Christian, anyway?)

As long as the church translates scriptures, scriptures are much in danger of sounding like the church.

Alternatively, one can probe the Greek to perceive Paul Envoy’s mood of stern counsel yield to commiseration. I will translate the whole paragraph.

I would have, then, the men, with uplifted holy hands, to pray everyplace, without anger and arguing; and the women, with seemly carriage and cautious and collected minds, to deck themselves not with curls and gold or pearls or costly clothes but, as befits those who profess piety, with good works. Let a wife learn peaceably, in all submission: I do not allow a woman to teach nor to tyrannize a husband, but to be at peace. For Adám was created first, then Eúa; and so Adám was not deceived, yet the woman once wretchedly deceived has been marked the law-breaker— Yet she will come safely through childbirth, if only she remain trusting, loving, and modestly holy; believe me.

One always reads I Tim ii.15 with astonishment. The astonishment can abate if one remembers that “saved” is obsolete English, not properly the revenant that does Evangelicalism’s bidding. But now one is bemused.

I contrived the following catechism as a comment on the passage.

Q. According to the Hebraíc scriptures, what were the results of the human disobedience after creation?

A. Conscience, and mortality.

Q. Can these ills be remedied?

A. Yes, by God’s special gifts mercy and eternal life, as his son Yesús taught and showed.

Q. And what were the punishments with which God cursed humanity for the disobedience?

A. For males, to encounter pain in their labors, and to find nature tend to resist them; and for females, to tend to submit to men, and to encounter pain in childbirth.

Q. Can humanity be rescued from these punishments?

A. Yes: by persisting through the pain, thus to renew the joys of creation. Specifically, males can emerge from the sweat of work with a new bounty, and a subjected nature; while females can pass through the pangs of childbearing to the reverence of husbands, and a baby.

There is an idea in much religion of a metaphysical foundation upon which practical action can be taken. For example, Islam erects the “Five Pillars”

Profession (of the creed),
Prayers,
Charity,
Fasting,
Pilgrimage (to the holy cities).

And ancient Jewish rabbis proposed seven precepts upon which all the world should base behavior; they are the Noachide Laws:

Monotheism,
No murder,
No robbery,
Sexual purity,
No blasphemy,
Kindness to animals,
Just courts.

Another example are the various Catholic religiouses, who generally profess four vows:

Poverty,
Celibacy,
Obedience,
and the fourth varies (e.g., stability, silence, loyalty to the pope).

The Religious Society of Friends has its “testimonies”, which by now have been narrowed to

Honesty,
Simplicity,
Non-violence,
Abstinence from nicotine, alcohol, or recreational drugs.

The Amish – Mennonites among whom I grew up base their copious lifestyle-laws on a three-cornered platform, viz.:

Nonconformity (to American life),
Uniformity,
Obedience.

Perhaps it is my knowledge of these religions that has gotten me thinking: What “pillars” could I discern in Jesus’s and his Envoys’ teaching upon which to base my life’s acts? To list them accurately, I would need to put out of my head all Christian dogma, to read thoroughly but sweepingly, to think systematically. Here, tentatively, is what I propose (roughly in the order the reader can find them):

Slavery,
Poverty,
Love and non-resistance,
Honesty,
Liberty,
Chastity (with a special meaning for the married).

I do not think that the defenders of traditional marriage can in the end win this raging fight, even if they were to find a spokesman who can be erudite. For supposedly Americans’ minds are to sort out a legal purpose for marriage — is it a smattering of economic rewards? is it a merit-badge? is it a license to venereal congress? — but all the while their hearts have no legal sensation, but a personal feeling hot-sweet as nostalgia: that marriage is one person’s promising another to love him always and become his family and recording that for the world to see.

Bonnie’s only begun her first term in college, and it seems to me she’s already been plunged neck-deep into the strident we-don’t-know-anything dogma that is reportedly pop-postmodernism. For example, the first lesson in her writing class is about how there can be no good writing — and a teacher forbade the class to critique grammar, making the curious dodge from fiat of calling it “inborn”.

I want to laugh, but something in it all seems deadly earnest.

I wonder how many more generations can find fuel from nothing but relief at having escaped modernism? But perhaps that is not what is happening at all; perhaps I really mean to be asking, How long will it take the Boomers to die?

Ask not thyself that question very often, or risk night-scares of Boomers living forever, grimmer and loucher with each century.