Coming Clean versus Copping Out

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self indulgence! You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also." (Matthew 23:25-26)

1. This was Jesus Christ, speaking to the Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees about their preoccupation with all appearances of good and righteous conduct. Through a great many added laws and moral prescriptions these leaders thought they had achieved good standing in the eyes of God. They cleaned up the outer appearance, but the inner remained filthy.

Jesus denounced their blind rule following as not only the wrong way to righteousness, but also utter hypocrisy: the Pharisees frequently performed their man-made rules at the cost of true morality. Any honest or dishonest lawyer can tell you that simply the correct application of law does not at all necessarily entail morality or justice.

The Pharisees denial of Jesus as the Messiah, or the Saviour, came from their other commitment. They had a strong commitment to a standard of righteousness which had been invented by themselves and their forefathers the rabbis. It touched their conduct, true enough, but it did not result in morality and more importantly, it did not resurrect their souls from sin.

2. "And when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of this Man's blood; see to that yourselves."

Pontius Pilate washed his hands of Jesus Christ, literally, as well as figuratively. When the Jewish mob threatened to riot (John 19:12) if Jesus were not crucified, Pilate gave in. He was unwilling to stir the Emperor's wrath nor have an unruly lot on his hands, so he knowingly condemned an innocent man (Matt 27:23, John 18:38).

Pilate knew that Jesus was no ordinary man, but his denial of Christ was a decision to remain agnostic. Jesus said to Pilate, "You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears My voice." In response to the living example of the "Way the Truth and the Life" (John 14:6), Pilate responded, "What is truth?" (John 18:38). In Christ's wrongful execution, as well as in response to Christ's claims to be God in the flesh, Pilate attempted to cast off the decision.

But there is no such thing as agnosticism with Jesus. The words, made famous by former president George W. Bush were actually spoken by another "tyrant" first: Jesus Christ. "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with me, scatters." (Matt 12:30)

Pontius Pilate did not wash his hands of Jesus, he denied Jesus.

3. "...There was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that He was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind Him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the heair of her head, and kissing His feet, and anointing them with the perfume." (Luke 7:37-38)

This unnamed "immoral woman" from the gospel of Luke had the gall to approach Jesus in the home of a Pharisee no less. This was most certainly not kosher. A great many things could be said about how this woman behaved toward Jesus: gratitude, tenderness, humility, submission; all of these certainly. However, the end result is what I am interested in here, and that is love.

As a result, Jesus tells the woman her sins are forgiven, that she is saved and she may "go in peace" (Luke 7:48, 50).

Conclusion

The Pharisees tried to clean themselves, as did Pilate; but the sinner washed Jesus' feet in humiliating repentance. The Pharisees were condemned, and Pilate executed Christ, but the woman was saved. There is another great washing in the New Testament I have not mentioned: Christ washing the feet of His disciples (John 13:5), and at first Peter is reluctant to be considered worthy of the honour.

The lesson I draw from all these washings is that Jesus is willing to wash me; if I would but only be willing to admit that He alone can make me truly clean.

Instructions for Revolution: Part 1

After writing a post on tyranny, I thought it would be profitable to post something about how I thus far understand, in my inexperience, how tyrannies are destroyed.

I say "destroyed" because make no mistake, in order to stop tyranny in any of its corporeal or noncorporeal (physical or nonphysical) forms you will be engaged in battle. When I say "destroyed" however, I do not necessarily mean that the entire nation or person must be erased, but that it is reduced to a state in which it can no longer exert its malevolent control over your person or persons.

History illustrates that war is not a battle unto complete annihilation of one side. As John McCain recently aptly pointed out of the current war in Afghanistan and terror in general, war is "a battle of wills". When one side has lost the will to fight, the war is over. A nation may lose the will to fight because it cannot stand casualties or seemingly unnecessary expenses (which would seem to be our current situation), or perhaps it has lost the will to fight because its general has been captured or killed in battle (This was Alexander the Great's favourite tactic), or perhaps most commonly, the nation has lost the ability to effectively put up a fight and thus surrenders to avoid disastrous damage to its homeland (Partly the issue for Imperial Japan in 1945).

The first step to destroying any system of governance (Tyrannical or not) is to destroy its values, the values held in the hearts of the people or person it governs. This holds two functions, it destroys the ability of the governance to control and manipulate by what rewards it offers for compliance. Secondly, undermining or proving false the values of a system and replacing them gains a convert or converts to the new ideology which then has:

a) The will to fight against what it now recognizes as falsehood, and;

b) The resilience to reject bribes or settlements from the tyranny.

A sure sign that you are dealing with a tyranny is that its values are not centred around the value of truth. Usually this takes the form of appealing to humanity's dark nature: self praise, material possessions, self-gratification etc. It may not be so very obvious though, and deception wouldn't be deception if it didn't try to hide itself at least a little. At the end of my last post I gave some indication of where good governance stands. I argue that humanity does have an inherently dark nature (some political systems will attempt to make you place abundant faith in man's or a single man's/party's overall goodness, like communism or fascism or totalitarianism). What are the signs of good governance?

a)Where there are signs that a person or persons is/are working against the grain of their darker moral nature(s); When the values of the government, expressed by word and deed are in line with, and reflect a primary interest in inalterable universal moral principles.

For example, liberty should have been to all people in the United States from the moment the constitution (a reflection of a nation's values) stated “All men are created equal”. But racism, like any other human crime, is a neverending battle, the Civil War was a major turning point for the United States, and the seeds of that victory gave men like Martin Luther King Jr., the liberty to further demolish ingrained racist tendencies and structures in American Society.

King was able to do what he did because of the revolution in American thinking that men like Abraham Lincoln fought for so desperately. The point stands however, that the encapsulated moral values of the US constitution have made it the bastion of liberty (all cynicism aside) that it is today. Anyone questioning that liberty, at least as it stands today, needs to have a look around the world. Of course, liberty is not something one can leave to the vagaries of human nature lest it be lost.

b) The first sign of good governance was the 'easy' part. The real test is truthfulness; the truthfulness of its ideas. Even presuming that your personal or national governance tells the truth about its intentions, and thinks that its moral stance is best, its moral stance may not reflect truthful values. I have already argued that the best governance comes from universal objective moral principles, and a large part of my reason for doing so is the fact that these kinds of principles are the least susceptible to common human weaknesses. Moral principles are not physical substances, so they rely indirectly for false or truthful fulfilment. What I mean is that the payoff from moral principles is one step removed from say the reward of millions of dollars in illicit cash. It is terribly easy to be bought off by millions of dollars in cash, while manipulating based on moral principles requires more leg work.

The safety of moral principles as a system of value is that in order to achieve effective governance they must be believed by the people or person being governed/tyrannized. Simply put, it is harder to convince someone to your ideology than it is to just pay out some kind of direct bribe (wealth, health, etc.)

The dangerous and powerful aspect of moral principles as a system of value is that if adopted over and above those baser human desires, it produces an adherent (for good or ill) which will be far more likely to remain fanatically loyal to the principle, since the moral principle goes far beyond the individual interest and stretches to the universal.

For example, fighting for “freedom” can be a great and good thing wielded by a genuine leader and can spur political, diplomatic or military action, but wielded by a deceitful or self-interested ruler 'freedom' or 'democracy' can be code words for enslavement. The Nazi's did not call themselves fascists, they were called “National Socialists”. The murderous communist regime of Russia likewise called itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. Under less extreme conditions, some socialist ideas can produce compassionate social change. Unbridled faith in a communist or National Socialist ideal; does not.

What causes then, an unbridled faith in certain principles to lead to the very disaster the creator may have intended to avoid? Friedrich Nietzsche probably wouldn't have been thrilled to learn that key parts of his philosophies had been adopted in hearty approval by Nazi Germany. The key problem is not precisely the ideal scenario philosophy, it is the factors that we decide to put faith in to make the 'ideal scenario' a reality. An edifice planned to be invulnerable cannot be built with vulnerable parts. A pure glass of water cannot be poured using contaminated water.

If we allow that human beings are fundamentally flawed creatures which tend toward evil rather than good (I leave that to your examination) then a system of governance which places excessive faith in an individual (even self), a ruler, a party or even in fact many people (Plato called democracy the worst form of government! I don't, for the record.) we are bound to end up in disaster. Additionally, we must concede that the 'ideal' scenario or utopia, can never exist. As a corollary, or side point, we must also concede that excessive faith in any factor which can be manipulated by human intervention or dependent upon human satisfaction (eg. Technology, economic prosperity, disco robots) will also fail as a means of creating utopia.

The consequence of the above paragraph is that in order for faith or trust to be well rested in an idea, the idea must rest in a true appraisal of its objects of concern. That is a general philosophical way of saying that if you want to govern human beings, you have to have a realistic or truthful notion about who human beings are, what they need, how they interact, what they are, and are not capable of and especially, how they are flawed. Thus the lament of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 5:8, “If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province, do not be shocked at the sight, for one official watches over another official, and there are higher officials over them.”

Solomon's disparaging message about human nature is a problem which evokes spiritual despair at the spiritual condition of humanity, at the condition of self before God. But politically speaking it is not something to cause us terrible anguish. Solomon's check and balance measure is just a few lines earlier in Eccl 4:9-13, where he expresses the power and survivability of a team working together. Although “one sinner can destroy much good” as Solomon said elsewhere, Eccl 4:12 tells us that “a cord of three strands is not easily broken”.

Although one cannot make an invulnerable armour out of that which is vulnerable, something very strong can be made out of many vulnerable parts. A kevlar vest is made of synthetic fibres woven together. It may not be invulnerable, but it has the power to slow or even stop a piece of pointed lead travelling at incredible speed.

The 'excessive' faith ideologies that I have mentioned are good examples of ideologies which, regardless of their moral stance, have failed the truth test of good governance. Promises are empty if they are based on a false sense of who we are as human beings; and they may even indicate a ruler waiting to exploit his advantage to create a tyranny.

I've already yakked long enough but maybe I'm making up for a couple month's posting. There's just one more thing. You don't really have to be a philosopher to weigh out all the ideas, in fact if you get caught up with just theories, you'll be lead astray. Perhaps the best way is to follow the guidelines that Christ gave when he said, “You shall know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they?” (Matthew 7:16)

The Pharisees had all sorts of moral rules for Jews but Jesus consistently saw through their hypocrisy and saw that although they “washed the outside of the cup” they did not wash the inner. The claims for morality did not match the inward reality of love for God and neighbour. The golden rule of treating others the way you wanted to be treated was the “Law and the prophets” (7:12), not the empty commandments of legalism.

It's kind of common sense that there's something fundamentally flawed with an ideology or value system that says one thing and does another; or claims to be good but all it does is oppress. That being said, its still easier said than done to ascertain the standing of a way of thinking. Tread carefully but decisively when it comes time to consider starting a war against tyranny. You may have to adopt an entirely new sight picture before you start shooting.

My idea in this first installment has not been to lay out to you the reader all the ways in which an ideology may be true or false. That is the task of a lifetime. You probably already have a good idea where I place my abundant faith, but that isn't really the point either. The truly difficult part of revolution is ascertaining the one's own values in relation to the values of the supposed tyranny, whether that tyranny is spiritual, mental, national, familial etc.

If one is not careful in this step, the project is misguided. An untruthful value system, no matter its promises of morality, will in the degree of its delusion, so also promote destruction and of course, tyranny. Just as demons can be cast out of a person and the demon return with seven worse than the first return, as Lenin replaced the self-centred Czarist system with murderous communism, so also can we be guilty of enslaving ourselves or others to an even worse conclusion than the first. Unbridled faith in an ideal can lead to tyranny. Unbridled faith in one's own revolution can be too.

Tyranny & Delusion

Tyranny is vicious, twisted and deluded as it is deceitful. Tyranny often attempts to force adherence from its subjects by conceptually replacing the higher with the lower; but by means of using the conceptual name of the higher for the sake of the lower. In English what's meant here is that tyranny always involves a selfishness, which is the lower concept, but this is disguised with the good of the many or at worst, the spiritual, the Divine. It appears to offer what you need or want, or will create the need or want that it can fulfil (like a cult).

You will encounter various types of tyrants in life; not just political ones. We may have been or may still be tyrants ourselves. It can be ideological, relational, physical, emotional...and so on.

It is the mark of a deluded person that he or she does not see it possible or reasonable that he or she could be deluded. But what really makes tyranny, evil & delusion so maddening and darkly comical is that it always whines longest and loudest about tyranny, evil & delusion. These are the first people to complain, point the finger and loudly accuse; especially when they do it against those who are trying to solve the problem. Those who make accusations of fear mongering, control, manipulation and coercion often follow the same crude rule of "He who smelled it dealt it".

But the truly different thing about tyranny as opposed to common delusion is its aggressive nature. Tyranny happens when a person, either by self-delusion or by knowing selfishness, exploits others or even self for the sake of something falsely considered to be valuable. Tactically speaking, this plays out by misleading others into also misplacing their sense of value.

The tyrant, for example, may believe that money, power, fame, sex, family, religion, ideology or the glory of some perceived atheistic society or religious utopia are the ultimate values for which he or everyone else including him, or everyone but him for the sake of him, must buy into. So, the tyrant embarks on a process of reeducation, convincing his family, or nation, or church, or even himself that the things which his delusion values are supremely valuable and are worth giving up things that most of us would consider inalienable rights.

You might think it strange that I say that we can tyrannize ourselves, but like I said, tyranny isn't just about that Persian guy you learned about from the 300 Spartans or about even something physically present or corporeal. We can be enslaved to many things that aren't even people.

It's okay to give up your "inalienable rights". It's okay to die for something, or give up yourself for somebody else, in fact it can be downright heroic. You just have to do a little searching about what's really valuable in life. If you value the wrong things or the right things even in the wrong order, you will be exploited by someone or something. If you value nothing, you'll be impoverished (and a liar I'd say). Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Like it or not, everyone has a master. There are good masters and bad masters. I'm hedging my bets that the best master is first the one that loves you before himself and his projects or ideas. I think that is a model for following inasmuch as it is leading. I think it is the difference between a Lord and a Tyrant.

Taking a Chance on a Crutch

"I've read your book and you have some serious character flaws."  Perhaps you've heard this kind of thing before.

Externalization happens when somebody refuses to take words to heart. It is a defense mechanism, indicative of cowardice (perhaps resulting from wounding); a mind that cannot accept correction because it is afraid it will break. That mind has already made an idol of itself: that it cannot rely on any Other but itself. But of course, we need each other.

So when the words come that must be internalized, in advanced cases a thickened membrane has formed over the brain that bounces back the message in the form of an attack on the source, the idea and/or blame laying of the problem to anywhere but self. (N.B. :This too can work in reverse in the "I am to blame because I secretly think that I should be able to do it all" paradigm)

The inward message is also likely to cause offense, because hey, how dare you even suggest that I am wrong? I'm wise after all. I know what's really causing the problem: its you, and that other guy, my boss, my spouse, my girlfriend, my boyfriend, my church, my in laws, my family, my dog, and the bad latte I had this morning.

There are added complications of course. When we unreflectively start blaming other sources for our problems there are inevitable contradictions in our speech. In fact, it starts out as incongruities in our stories, but ends up being externally what it is internally: lying. If we lie to ourselves we will inevitably lie to others simply to avoid the conclusion that there's something wrong with us.

The incongruities I refer to are those things which we blame as the source of ills or possible ills. It is very easy to blame circumstances or states of affairs as the source of problems or failures. For example, one could say that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Therefore, being rich equals trouble. This kind of thinking will lead one into trouble, because lacking riches, it could be argued sensibly, leads to stealing, marital breakup and other social vices, which also may in turn cost you your soul. In this case of course, I'm not advocating that we all become communists but I am saying that the source of the vice is not actually in the state of affairs, but in humanity itself. (Sorry communism, humanism)

The well adjusted person, perhaps the wise person we might say, is not the one who avoids every manner of circumstance that suggests trouble, but rather is well informed about what pressures situations can bring to bear upon his or her own faulty humanity. This is why proverbs can be antithetical; worldly wisdom is on a hinge, difficult situations swing upon a personality. The person who avoids every circumstance of danger (There is a lion in the street!) we would call a coward or a sluggard. The person who charges into every circumstance of danger we would call a fool. (I'm feeling like Aristotle right now)

Many will call this the virtue of the mean (or whatever those Greeks called it). But we could also call this mediocrity, and beyond that, what exactly determines when to be mean and when not to? (I like being mean. Whats wrong with that?)

Bringing around the discussion back to the unreflective person, you'll easily see now how these various do's and don'ts actually end up being a prison for many people. They not only cower in a self made cage of mediocrity, but they also make statements to different people at different times saying wildly different things. At first they are just incongruities, but if a person wisens up at all to the ludicrous swings of the self-hinge, eventually he will start lying to avoid admitting that he is the gatekeeper.

Now here's the point to really catch I think. In order to venture out into situations that endanger any normal human being in any number of ways (like motherhood, marriage, military or star trek conventions) you must have what the externalizing person does not: internal strength from reliance on an Other. The ability to venture out into danger corresponds to one's concept of personal security. For some people it is sheer delusion, "This will never happen to me" or "love conquers all" or "I have the speed and skills with nunchucks of Chuck Norris", but for everyone it comes down to what one trusts in to keep oneself safe.

There are a whole host of things that can make you feel assured of success, and just as there are many sensible things to avoid, there are many sensible things to remedy the ills. There's just one problem: sensible things aren't eternal things. They are quite literally not eternal because they are just that...sense-able.

I want to suggest, not so subtly, that you don't have to be afraid of anything or anybody if you have a personal eternal crutch. Personally, I am not ashamed to admit that I am so lame I stumble and fall like a drunken manatee when I attempt to walk on my own. I am ashamed however, when I walk out the door without the Crutch, believing I have healed myself.

It's okay though. After I clean up the blood, I remember that after I have suffered the disaster of death, I'll never be lame again.