Divine Illumination Makes Morals

So with all this blather of mysticism and putting the ego (reason) in its place, what is the point?

Paul covers that all too well:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and lack compassion, I have become as clanging brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I speak prophecies, and fathom all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so as to move mountains, and do not have compassion, I am nothing. And though I give away all my possessions to feed the poor, and though I deliver my body to be burned, and have not compassion, I am gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

As D.G. noted, even Aleister Crowley understood human reason was untrustworthy. Yet, according to the accounts I read, Crowley remained abusive of others and self-indulgent. A lot of good it does to have deep knowledge if there’s no power to act. Show me the wildest pagan, or harshest atheist critic, who observes good morals, and I’ll take them any day over a monster church filled with evangelical fools clinging to their materialistic middle class wealth.

For when the Gentiles, who do not have the written Law, act by nature according to the Law, these without a written Law are a law unto themselves. (Romans 2:14)

Jesus pointed out several times the Law of Moses was not on a par with the actual Law of God. The writer of Hebrews spends several chapters saying the same thing, how the Temple and rituals, and the entire national structure and identity of Israel at her best, was merely a shadow, a symbol of the real thing in Heaven. Thus, Laws in the Bible (Noah and Moses) are meant to be abstracted, to be understood on the level of the mind, pointing to something much higher coming from above. The Laws are training for the intellect to be ready to serve the imperatives of the Spirit communicated through our spirits.

Do all you can to obey those Laws and you’ll have the promises of the Laws, summed up in the Hebrew word shalom. While it translates to “peace”, it points more to peace of mind, because clinging to those commands will go far in bringing your life into agreement with the fundamental moral nature of all Creation. Paul says Creation groans under the futility of fallen human reason, that men who ignore revelation and place their ego/reason on the throne of action, evaluating and judging what is right by their mere intellect, will inevitably miss the morals because the mind cannot process the obvious divine hints God left for us. So we need the Laws to indicate something the mind cannot perceive through the senses and mere reasoning.

Jesus said you could summarize the Law by clinging to the Person of God and showing His brand of love to the people around you. The only thing on this fallen plane which will outlive it is people, so people always matter more than anything else. If we could just get that one issue straight, there would be no evil laws on this earth. Divine secrets of the universe have no meaning if the fundamental power of compassion is missing. Among the lore of modern evangelicals is the story of a preacher who dreamed Satan stood on the corner accurately preaching the gospel message, and people walked by as if deaf. That’s because, while Satan has better access to divine truth than you and I, he is not committed to its purpose. His preaching would be intellectually accurate by any theologian’s measure, but powerless to affect a thing. But a powerless child barely able to speak can convey the power without all the fancy words.

Don’t tell me what you are, nor what you do. Tell me what burns in your heart, the longing of your soul. If you can tell me who you’d pay any price to bring the full power of moral truth to the awareness of other people, I’ll be impressed. If your longings include stuff, or even high ideals and grand theories, we need to talk, because you don’t get it.