Scriptural restoration

A rant.

In light of Revelation 2:26-28

And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star.

Christians better take care not to separate themselves from Christ's works. So, whenever there are murmurs asking whether Christ was wrong or whether his disciples misunderstood him, it is cause for concern.

Now, to be clear, Christ's disciples did misunderstand him, it is mentioned on several occasions, but not on the subjects where it is nowadays felt that they should have.

The root of our modern aberrations is onefold, i.e. the dogma that

Man has the right to decide what is right.

This is a teaching of a false freedom, really the basic false freedom which is the blinding of man's moral sense epitomised by Charles Manson as seen in the documentary Manson.

I recommend that you see it. Once. It will help you recognise the same thing in other clothes. The correct take on the matter is of course that

Man has the duty to clarify what is right.

Anyway, while the false dogma shows itself in the nude as legalism, there are other instances where it prefers to confuse its nature. Still, we should not overlook legalism, only because it's naked. Legalism claims to have divine license, since

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

However, this cannot be divorced from

Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.

From above means by way of the virtues of the Roman people, and in particular soldiers, that God placed in their hearts. So, if someone was to usurp the right to declare laws without having proven his merit, he has no divine license at all to divorce it from what another man feels in his heart to be right.

It's the kind of thing that needs to sink in. A Christian, of course, feels in his heart that what Christ commanded man is right.

So, let us come to the confusions. The oldest confusion, which has been with Christianity since the time of the apostles, is gnosticism. I'll follow Epiphanius of Salamis' depiction in the Paranion. I shall quote some passages, others I shall not, because I don't want my blog to become a source for porn movie scripts, as the Paranion has. Still, the matter of sexuality has to be frankly discussed. So, let us have it.

Though he [Nicolaus] had a beautiful wife he had refrained from intercourse with her, as though in emulation of those whom he saw devoting themselves to God. He persevered for a while but could not bear to control his incontinence till the end. Instead, desiring to return like a dog to its vomit, he kept looking for poor excuses and inventing them in defense of his own intemperate passion. (Being ashamed and repenting would have done him more good!) Then, failing of his purpose, he simply began having sex with his wife. But because he was ashamed of his defeat and suspected that he had been found out, he ventured to say, “Unless one copulates every day, he has no part in eternal life.” For he had shifted from one pretense to another.

Moreover they deceive the womenfolk who put their trust in them, “laden with sins and led away with divers lusts,” and tell their female dupes, “So-and-so is a virgin”—one who has been debauched for so many years, and is being debauched every day! For they never have their fill of copulation, but in their circles the more indecent a man is, the more praiseworthy they consider him. They say that virgins are women who have never gone on to the point of being inseminated in normal marital relations of the customary kind. They have sex all the time and commit fornication, but before the pleasure of their union is consummated they push their villainous seducer away.

If someone couldn't be at ease without sexual release, would he sin, if he had it thinking little of it? Ipso facto? Or is there something else? Well, there is something else, namely a confusion about the significance of pleasant and unpleasant feelings. It is most noteworthy that Christianity, since its inception, has been accompanied by the understanding that the way to heaven is to forget about the world, i.e. to revel in pleasant feelings and to avoid unpleasant ones.

The New Testament is replete with references to the world, this one (τοῦ κόσμου τούτου). Christians are supposed to think little of the world. But, and here the King James Version translates incorrectly,

All things were made by the same [the notion]; and without the same was not any thing made that was made. (πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ [ὁ λόγος] ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν)

So, the world is bad as it is, but whatever heavenly notion enters our hearts does so to make it better. And now we see the root again, the false dogma specified to mean

Man has the right to be happy any which way he wishes.

But he has not, rather

Man has the duty to do justice to the elation that fills his heart by manifesting it in the world.

And with a little common sense we can derive from this the answers to the sexual questions of the day. That, despite it not being all that difficult, this is often not done is because of the inherently awkward nature of sexual questions. For instance, it would be quite in keeping with the Christian teaching to say to homosexuals that they should let the world see all the wonderful things they see in other men, but you cannot really say that in church. Likewise you can't tell lesbians that they should look after old ladies or something. But, as a matter of fact, to tell homosexuals to enjoy their company in a family of their own, where they sit together in the warmth of their home drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, is decidedly gnostic, because nothing comes of it, though in a very bourgeois sort of way.

Well, what other confused versions of the root of all evil have we? Although I'd really like to come up with a categorisation that would allow me to deduce all possible forms of confusion based on the weak points of man's nature, I don't think that I can do that. Instead I can only point to the other big confusion that has come about with the dawn of democracy, namely the dropping of the first part of the great commandment:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

That is to say that first and foremost we should indulge our fellow man. But look at this and tell me whether you can find the flaw:

1. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
2. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.
   

Still thinking? Real prophets exalt themselves and are abased and false ones humble themselves and are exalted? Well, it depends on whether you exalt or humble yourself before God or your fellow men. It does make a difference, you see? Life and death, destruction of the body or the soul.

Given this, how should we as Christians behave? What should be our attitude? Should we kill prophets, because we don't like what they say? Should we be pleased, if someone tells us what we want to hear? And if not that, well, what should be our attitude?

I think that we, in light of this, have to be modest, the opposite of overbearing, content with a little. We have to be tolerant, seeing the good in things. And, considering this, the confused form of the false dogma this time is

Man has the right to be accepted as he is.

But the truth is that

Man has the duty to acknowledge the limits of his usefulness for the divine plan.

Even Christ had to do that. So, that are the facts of life: If you think you're doing good, but you aren't, you better cease (that) activity. It is of course not a counsel for suicide, but for adaptation. One bearing this has is on women's speech on religious matters. Unless a woman received divine revelations, she could, in my experience, utter nothing that would make an impression on a man's ethics. Usually, the only thing that does make an impression on a man's ethics coming from a woman, are deeds. Women can shame men by being braver than them. Women can lift the bitterness off a man's heart by being good-hearted. But nothing a woman says proves more than her wit to a man.