The biggest problem is not so much what we do as it is how we abuse God’s wonderful gifts.
As always, what follows assumes you have already recognized the grand failure of Western Civilization. As much as possible you must disentangle your mind from a vast substrate of lies that serve as the foundation for modern Western thinking. I know — it’s a tall order, but if you don’t get started you’ll never make any progress in walking with Christ.
From my experience, America is the epitome of all that’s wrong with the West. Whatever other Western countries might do wrong, America seems to do it even worse in terms of violating God’s moral character. Thus, as I write with a prophetic castigation of American culture in particular, it may or may not fit that well with some other Western society outside America.
In America especially, the model for male consciousness is some grouchy Norse deity with varying names. He’s always capricious and obnoxious, perpetually looking for an excuse to explode with rage, and softens only when he’s drunk. The model for feminine consciousness is derived from the very worst elements of Oester mythology — solipsist to the core, she manipulates with the utter conviction that she is by far the superior sex, the only thing that saves humanity. Variations on these two don’t change how they have pretty much shaped our entire consciousness of sexual identity.
So let’s resolve one thing up front: We are all pussies in God’s Presence. No living being could ever be more masculine than God. And while there is a boatload of blasphemous nonsense about it in Western religion, God is also feminine and nurturing more than any woman could be. He made women, too, and they reflect His divine nature in their own way.
But the one thing Western guys need to understand is that when we come to Him as Lord, we are all the Bride of Christ. Men, we are wired to do this. We have within us the capacity to operate as a female in spiritual terms as His Bride. Sex is a very pale comparison, but it still symbolizes the rapturous communion with God in our spirits. The problem comes when men don’t realize how that wiring exists for that purpose and take two general tracks into abuse of it.
Most Western men have a phobia about this, so they try their darnedest to bury it. This is partly why men can manifest that grouchy Norse sonuvabitch deity aspect. Instead of simply going away, this marvelous gift from God oozes and extrudes and manifests involuntarily because it cannot die. So the instant a man has a clue what it is, he overreacts to stomp it back down into the basement where he never goes. The result is some really stupid reactions from what men don’t understand about themselves. When you fight your own nature in one way, you tend to fight it in other ways.
The other common track men take is obvious: homosexuality. If you doubt that God says it’s a sin in all contexts, I cannot help you. The problem is not that men aren’t supposed to feel or act like females at all, it’s that we have only one right place for that wiring, and that’s in spiritual communion with God as part of His Bride. Submit emotionally to God, not other men.
But you’ll notice that we are not under the Law of Moses and that a man who can’t or won’t understand why some other men go that false route, such a closed mind is not fit to lead as a shepherd of His pasture. It’s simply a bad way to do something entirely natural for men as males. Get over it. Meanwhile, it also means you have no excuse for not understanding how your wife feels about things, at least on some level. But that grouchy Norse deity is not the God of the Bible, and Western social structure is inherently anti-Christian.
I will let you explore the implications on your own, but this is a prophetic Word from God.
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Sometimes I love what you write, sometimes I hate it. Call me “western heretic” (sic) if you want, but relating God relationship with man to sodomy is repulsively blasphemous. God is Father and King, so we are sons and servants, not catamites. The Bride is the Church, the Assembly of Believers. An Assembly can’t be a catamite. His Love isn’t sexual. Of course women reflect God, because Eve was made from Adam rib (XX = gemination of the X of XY), but this doesn’t make God a hermafrodite. This simply means that at a genetic level women are contained in men. Adam, not Eve, was the Imago Dei, thus Patriarchy is Holy.
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/11691/what-are-the-key-differences-between-the-western-and-eastern-christianity/
By the way, as an Eastern Orthodox I see a calvinist influx in your doctrine, specifically Total Depravity, Unconditional Election and Divine Command Theory. You also believe Hell is God Gulag (ANE prison = slavery = gulag) with Satan as His Jailer, thus making God an Almighty Stalin. You mix an eastern (mystical) focus with a calvinistic (western) conception of God, so I would call your doctrine MSC (Mystical Semi-Calvinism). Thats why I regard your “ANE” as a speculative reconstruction: MSC is to historical ANE what wiccans are to ancient celts.
Hello, Steven. I think you missed the point, but that’s okay. Your Eastern Orthodox background isn’t free of bias, either. But I am aware of just how difficult it is to reconstruct what came before any divergence between the Church into East and West. The roots of that split go way back before the church made peace with Rome. But I’m grateful that you find it worth your time to come around and pick at things you don’t like.
Hello, pastor. Maybe I missed the point, but even if you were using homosexuality as a metaphor, its a pretty gross metaphor. I guess you tried to shock grouchy jocks, yet you end up shocking a prudish nerd. Anyway, I doubt those brutes would read your blog. Grouchy jocks only use computers for porn, sports and facebook.
Of course Eastern Orthodoxy isn’t perfect, but my heart resonates with what Kalomiros says about western views of hell. Sometime ago I have a faith crisis because of the Problem of Hell. I felt wicked, guilty, blasphemous for thinking that Eternal Torment makes God a Cosmic Stalin. Then I discovered Orthodoxy, and found peace.
Have you read the Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler? Spengler explains how western christianity is radically different from eastern (ancient) christianity. He accurately calls western civ “faustian” (Faust was a german scholar who exchanged his soul for material wealth and power). Spengler also accounts for the hellenist influx you noticed in early christianity, calling it “the apollinean pseudomorphosis of the magian soul”.
I’m grateful that you take criticism so well. I usually stay silent when I agree and speak when I disagree, something most people find rude.
Steven, I take neither myself nor my theology that seriously. I take faith seriously, and just about anything I say is merely my personal experience with faith. BTW, I didn’t suggest homosexuality in the article above; I used common American metaphors to show that homosexuality was a a mistake arising from no clue as to what that feminine thread in masculine identity was good for. It has nothing to do with what our bodies can do, but with what our spirits can accomplish when we surrender to God. I wasn’t speaking to the jocks, but as as a jock. As noted, even the most righteous sex is a poor shadow of spiritual ecstasy.
The business of Hell is little more than struggling with something we cannot comprehend. All we can do is extrapolate what wrath against sin might mean after this life. Jesus offered just a few images from His parables. Then again, I’m sure eternity in the Presence of God having rejected His revelation can’t be pleasant no matter what we might imagine. Not everyone could or should embrace my particular answer, but it brings me peace. When you tell me you have peace, I’m not going to argue.
I’ve seen Spengler’s book, but I could never find a copy I could afford. It didn’t seem to be all that new, since my educational background includes an awareness of global theological traditions. I tend to think that Eastern Orthodox took a strong turn at some point during those years when serious scholars tried too hard to make faith cerebral. There was more than just west and east, but the other threads mostly died out. I don’t have room to recount it all here. But I agree Western is Faustian.
The membership of this parish is limited to those who can tolerate me. I see no reason I can’t tolerate your objections because I have no doubt other readers might actually prefer your answer. Their growth in faith is far more important than my ego.
Sorry for misunderstading you. I’m not american. Hmm, I’m not sure homosexuality is synonymous with effeminacy. That both liberals and jocks portrait homos as drag-queens don’t mean that they are accurate about it.
Kalomiros doesn’t claim that eternity would be pleasant for the damned. In case you want to know how Eastern Orthodoxy conceives Hell, read his essay:
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/the-river-of-fire-kalomiros/
Maybe I misunderstood your views on Hell. Because of what you wrote about ANE prisons and Satan, I thought you view Hell as an Eternal Gulag, meaning the damned perform forced labor under Satan whip. Am I wrong about you view of Hell?
Your educational background was protestant. Most western theologians have a poor grasp of Orthodoxy. All true orthodox theologians are mystics (to distinguish between theology and mysticism is a western thing). At least you would agree with me that Orthodoxy is free from germanic/matriarchal influx.
While I like your altruistic stance, I want to make clear that I never had the intent of disrespecting you in any way.
P.S. What do you think about annihilationism and universalism?
(*sigh* Something crazy happened and wiped out a very nice reply, so maybe I can do it again here.)
Granted, there’s little I can do except write from my own perspective. Many of my posts are a response to something I encounter here in the US, and that remains a significant element of my audience. Take me with a grain of salt. BTW, I am aware that more than a few of my readers are homosexual, yet they keep reading. I got comfortable dealing with them, if not before, then at least during the time I drove a taxicab at night here in OKC (1992-93). They formed a large minority of my customers. The American gays would likely have caught onto what I meant, never mind whether they agree.
As with all things in the unseen realm, we can never come closer than a parable. Human language cannot describe that higher plane, only indicate something about it that allows us to act as God intended. So my description of Hell is by no means literal. Satan isn’t permitted blessings of his own; he has to take them from people who have no idea how to claim what God put here for all of us. That’s what I mean by slavery — he siphons off their blessings by keeping them deluded about God’s moral character woven into Creation, and amply explained in revelation. A whip? That would likely symbolize the sense of condemnation I wrote about in another blog post. Sinners are deeply deluded and seldom experience in any useful way a sense of being deceived or enslaved.
However, I take rather seriously John’s Apocalypse where it talks about all of that ending at the Last Judgment. If I can barely make sense of the parabolic language of our current temporal context, how could I possibly estimate what comes after all things are finished? Eternity after The Judgment will not be the same as before, and whatever function Hell serves will be finished. Our universe is strictly limited and will be redeemed and changed into something eternal somewhere down the road. Whatever “Hell” might be arises from the existence of this universe. I can’t imagine what follows, but as already noted, it can’t be pleasant to stand in God’s Presence outside His divine favor. How we structure that in our minds is, to me, a matter of individual awareness in seeking God’s face.
My awareness of Orthodoxy is limited, for sure. During my education, at which point I was already questioning Protestantism, our courses did explore the initial splitting and distinctives that arose from various controversies. Once I became aware of the underlying theological differences, I knew that Orthodoxy wasn’t for me. Not necessarily wrong, just not for me. I can’t pretend God doesn’t use it for His glory and many fine servants of God walk there. It gives me no heartburn at all. Very early in my studies I ceased to take formal theology very seriously. I knew it was a matter of faith and that it was all I could do to find what God had for me without worrying how someone else found peace with Him. I was a Christian Mystic long before I realized it.
I do have a rather significant objection to annihilationism and universalism. I find them flatly denying Scripture. It’s one thing to read the same Bible and come to different conclusions about what it says; it’s another to assert something that clearly came from outside Scripture. I won’t try to run off the folks who embrace those things, but they should know I won’t take those notions seriously.
Steven, “membership” in my parish has one requirement: That you can tolerate my blather. To the degree you don’t get what I write, I would hate for you to walk away without some useful attempt to clarify. I never sensed any disrespect from you, so count yourself among friends here. The membership includes Muslims, Buddhists, syncretists of all flavors, Catholics, the full range of evangelicals, not to mention a collection of self-professing pagans, some atheists and — God only knows what else. I became aware of this when they subscribed and I chased the links back to their blogs, etc. Don’t ask me how or why they felt moved, but that’s all that matters to me. I serve those who want a taste of what I can offer. This isn’t religion, per se, but meta-religion: How to construct your own.
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I should have taken that into account. There are jocks in every country, but US highschools are unique in their nonsensical quarterback worship. Well, its important to distinguish between homosexualily per se (a curse some people have) and homosexual sex (a willful sin). Biblical anathemas are specifically against the latter (sodomy).
The way you picture damnation now (as a subjective experience instead of the torture chamber of western theology) resembles the orthodox view. I think parasitism is more accurate than slavery for what you say Satan does. Slavery evokes Gulag, and a Hellish Gulag would be something like this: http://www.yogaroger.com/IMAGENES/INFIERNO/jueces/J3_8.jpg
So you don’t have any picture of how would be the Lake of Fire? Western christians usually believe in a literal pool of lava in which the ressurected sinners are throwed. BTW, what do you think about hellish NDEs?
Be aware that western (catholic/protestant) and orthodox accounts of the Schism differ in many key points. Protestants usually share (more or less) the catholic perspective. Did you read the topics I linked? I want to be sure you understand why I feel attracted to orthodoxy, despite that in a sense I’m to orthodoxy what Luther was to catholicism (I could be called an Eastern Heterodox).
I became a christian thanks to a mystical vision. A Light of Perfect Beauty appeared before me when I was about to kill myself by jigai (I was really depressed in my late teens and if jigai was used by samurai women is because it works). Instinctively I kneeled, tears of joy flowing from my eyes. “Who are you, Perfect Being?” -I asked- “He who you call Jesus Christ” -He replied telepathically-. Then the Light vanished and I felt comforted. Notice He didn’t order me to kneel, neither He forbade me to commit suicide under threat of hellfire like an Authoritarian (euphemistically “Sovereign”) God would do.
Steven wrote: Well, its important to distinguish between homosexualily per se (a curse some people have) and homosexual sex (a willful sin).
Yes. We are all full of perverse desires, but surrendering to them is what crosses the line. And I agree that the Bible takes an particularly stringent view of this sin in terms of moral consequences here in this world.
I think parasitism is more accurate than slavery for what you say Satan does.
Fair enough. I don’t view slavery through a strictly Western lens. For example, I don’t find that the Bible condemns it flatly as Westerners do. But it’s too complicated to address without including a long review of all the Western moral objections. I find Western prisons morally worse, for example.
what do you think about hellish NDEs?
Like a lot of things, the answer is “insufficient data.” I don’t feel any urge to explain them, but I have no doubt God uses things I’ll never have to worry about in my own life.
accounts of the Schism differ in many key points
The Schism was a political historical event. To the degree that religion has been politicized is where it fails most. I have no sympathy with either side of the Schism. I am aware that most of the folks I address remain under the influence of the Catholic propaganda, so I tend to couch many things I write in those terms. Most Protestants have no idea the degree to which they depend on Catholicism for the very structure of their thoughts and beliefs. While I admit my reading was spotty, I pay more attention to the divergence in teaching and philosophical structures that separated Catholic and Orthodox religion long before the Schism. It’s a tangled mess that can leave your head spinning and after reading into it back in my 30s, I lost interest in the whole debate. There was a time when I really dug deep into philosophy as the means to explaining the shape of belief. It wasn’t fruitless, but it wasn’t the way forward. I don’t approach discussions of God intellectually at all, but defer to the ANE parabolic/symbolic approach as near as I can understand it.
That said, I would say that I rather agree with the extended quote at one of your links from The River of Fire.
On the other hand, I have backed away from all discussion of how one receives spiritual birth. I try to avoid talk of “salvation” in that sense because I’m neither precisely synergist nor monergist; I think both represent a false question. I assert the initiative is in God’s hands, but I never attempt to describe any kind of process, because we simply cannot know. I do assert something that looks like Calvinism, but is actually nothing more than Paul’s assertion of sovereignty flatly stated in Romans 9. Paul doesn’t actually bother distinguishing between the hardening of some while in this life versus the hardening that keeps folks from entering the afterlife condemned. So I end up telling folks that there is no formula, no clear statement of belief about how it works. My general statement is that, if someone is worried about such things, I might be able to help. If you aren’t worried about it, there is little I can do except demonstrate my faith and hope God uses it to awaken something inside of you. But everything I have to offer is the biblical revelation about how to live in this world to prepare for what comes after this life.
And as for suicide, I have my own stories. I take no issue at all with your description of how you found peace. God works in ways we could never comprehend.
I equated slavery with gulags. Do you find Western prisons worse than gulags? I doubt Solzhenitsyn would agree, despite being a non-westerner. There are slaves in US prisons: sexual slaves. Men are raped more than women in USA for that reason. To me, the better way to deal with criminals would be to focus on prevent recidivism by shooting them. Firing squads are cheaper than prisons, and that way prison overcrowding, prison rape and recidivism would be solved at once. Some innocents may be executed that way, but I would prefer death over prison or slavery, so I’m simply following the Golden Rule here.
Most hellish NDEs implicitly portrait God as a self-righteous psychopath. To me, they are either hallucinations or demonic fakes. Also, they usually have a pentecostal background, which is suspicious given the thaumaturgical focus of Pentecostalism, which goes against the theurgical focus of Orthodoxy.
Politics follows theology (or philosophy, which is secular theology). Thats why I believe Ayn Rand statement “the most evil man in history was not Marx, Lenin, or Stalin, but Immanuel Kant”. In the same manner, there would be no capitalism if weren’t for calvinism.
“Most Protestants have no idea the degree to which they depend on Catholicism for the very structure of their thoughts and beliefs”
Exactly. They pretend they can just ignore history, then claim to have received the Apostolic Faith ex nihilo yesterday. I won’t do the same thing with Orthodoxy, thats why I said before I’m an Eastern Orthodox, as I’m an EO like Luther was a Catholic. That said, I’m too asocial, eccentric and individualist to tolerate EO Caesarism.
Your last paragraph strikes me as apophatic fatalism (notice that calvinistic fatalism is catapathic). Regarding Romans 9, after my faith crisis I always read Scripture through the lens of my mystical experience, as without it I would be a pagan corpse. The literalists may cry “burn in hell, you heretic!”, yet I think it takes a humble attitude to acknowledge that we can’t fully understand Scripture.
Steven wrote: Do you find Western prisons worse than gulags?
No, they are too different for such a simple comparison. There are too many variations for such a generalization. I agree that we should aim at helping people to reform themselves, but the Bible also offers exile as a more humane way of removing recalcitrant criminals from society. It requires a whole range of thinking discarded long ago to draw closer to divine justice.
I think it takes a humble attitude to acknowledge that we can’t fully understand Scripture.
Of course. I’ve written about that extensively. On the one hand, I have to sense that I know what God is saying to me. I’m also obliged to share it as best I can. I would never insist you can’t read it differently than I do. I also can’t prevent you making associations between what I say in my own context with what you’ve heard from others in a different context. The task of sharing is fraught with challenges, so I seek peace with my conscience and let God handle all the things He promised. I don’t think it matters much whether you can associate my comments with one thing or another (apophatic versus catapahtic) because God spoke in Scripture of Himself both ways. Fatalism in one man is realism to another. I can’t be all things to all people.
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