The Spectrum of Creation and the Transition of Divine Love

Something that stands out to me when I read Genesis 1:1-31 is the recurring theme of spectrum, gradation, and transition.

The passage is bookended by the distinction of day and night, and then by that of male and female, but it's interspersed with a spectrum of creation and the transitory refrain of “evening and morning.” Furthermore, God's declaration of mankind being made both male AND female punctuates the narrative. While the binaries “day and night” may be the primary elements, the spectrum and transitional gradations are persistently mentioned, rhythmically repeating throughout the passage.

The passage opens with the elemental dichotomy of day and night, but this stark contrast is harmonized by the gentle transition of evening and morning. It proceeds to explore the realms of water and sky, echoing the motif of a harmonizing transition. Next, it delineates the boundary between sea and land, an interaction that naturally fosters a spectrum of flora. We are then presented with the spectrum of lights, embodied by the sun, moon, and stars. This is followed by a portrayal of the diverse spectrum of life—fish, birds, land animals, and all manner of fauna. These stanzas are rhythmically punctuated by the transitional refrain, “there was evening, there was morning…” This refrain eschews the notion of a stark dichotomy, favoring instead the concept of a gradual, harmonious, seamless transition.

The culmination of this creation narrative comes when God says, "Let US create mankind in OUR image." Here we now see the spectrum, gradation, and transition of male AND female within the very nature of God being imparted directly to mankind, not as a binary dichotomy, but as a unified, if graduated, whole. Interestingly, the text does not proclaim that humans are made in the image of God as male OR female, but rather, as male AND female. This suggests a spectrum within the divine image itself, and by extension, within humanity.

Expanding on this idea, it might be argued that this vision of the divine reflects an understanding of God that transcends strict dichotomies. It provides room for a God who encompasses the full range of existence, from one extreme to the other, and everything in between — the entire spectrum, as it were.

The notion of transition, spectrum, and gradation within humanity could be seen as a mirror of our own experiences and identities. Our lives are not characterized by stark, unchanging binaries, but rather by dynamic, fluid spectrums. In this light, Genesis could be read as a celebration of the diversity inherent in the world and the divine image within us all.

The idea that this passage would suddenly veer from the overarching themes of spectrum and transition, so evident in all of creation, to confine the understanding of humanity to a stark binary, is not one that can be readily accepted. To me, such a jarring shift seems at least unlikely, and arguably absurd. When we consider the human condition in all its diversity, the ideas of transition, spectrum, and gradation seem to reflect our lived experience much more accurately.

It's important to note that within this concept of spectrum, the binary concepts of male and female continue to retain their significance. These are epitomized in Christian tradition by Christ and the Theotokos, as well as by the various saints whose lives embody a wide range of human experience and virtue. These figures stand as archetypes of identity and spirituality, giving shape and meaning to our understanding of gender in its most profound sense.

Similarly, the concept of spectrum does not undermine the sanctity of marriage. Rather, marriage exists as a wellspring pouring life into the spectrum. Marriage, within this understanding, continues to be a sacred covenant that serves as a microcosm of divine love, mirroring the relationship between Christ and the Church. It is the cradle of life, the nexus from which the full spectrum of creation springs forth. Sacramental marriage can still be celebrated as the union of male and female, without needing to exclude or belittle other relationships of love and commitment within the spectrum of human relationships. The sacrament's nature is simply to highlight the procreative and symbolic nature of the union between two polarities of the full spectrum of life.

The sacramental view of marriage, particularly in Christian traditions, understands this union as a profound symbol of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Within this sacred bond, two distinct individuals come together in a covenant of love, fidelity, mutual support, and the potential for new life. This mirrors the spiritual covenant between Christ and His followers, the Church. Furthermore, the potential of this union to produce new life symbolizes the life-giving and transformative power of Christ's love.

This is a picture to be celebrated by all, whether sacramentally married or not. It's a celebration not merely of the union itself but of the truths it embodies: selfless love, unity in diversity, and the capacity to bring forth new life — physical, emotional, and spiritual. This sacramental understanding of marriage resonates powerfully with biblical teachings and offers a profound metaphor for the divine-human relationship.

However, embracing the sacramentality of marriage does not necessitate the rejection or condemnation of non-sacramental relationships. Every relationship, whether sacramental in the traditional sense or not, holds the potential to manifest love, mutual respect, and growth.

Why can’t non-sacramental marriages still bear the fruit of love, understanding, and mutual growth? Can they not still contribute positively to the broader community, nurturing values such as tolerance, compassion, and empathy? In essence, they are another expression of the diverse ways in which love manifests in the world.

While these relationships might not be sacramentalized, they are not devoid of sacred worth. They reflect the broad and inclusive nature of God’s love. Therefore, rather than being subjects of rejection or condemnation, non-sacramental marriages can still be acknowledged for their unique expressions of love and commitment, contributing to the beautiful diversity of human relationships. When we interpret Genesis as capturing the vast spectrum of life, our perception of the divine image within us all becomes profoundly sharpened. This perspective doesn't simply encourage tolerance for its own sake, but rather it invites us to appreciate the nuances of life, recognizing that it doesn't flicker in strict binaries, but instead glides across a broad spectrum of possibilities. Observing these graceful transitions should serve as a gentle reminder to extend this same grace to each other in our shared journey.

Agile, Scrum, and the Divine Liturgy

 A lot of working in an organization is about change management.  Getting people to adapt to new ideas and processes is difficult, even if the new idea or process is a really good one.  This phenomenon has been studied in business schools and there's a familiar graph that shows the adoption cycle (picture with this post). The cycle is often given in the context of product adoption, but it also relevant to process and technology adoption within a company.

In the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, I recognized this pattern as well.

The liturgy begins with the Gospels being held by the priests (innovator stage), and then there is a part of the liturgy called "the little entrance" where the Gospel is brought out to the people and put onto the alter (early adoption), it is later read and a homily is given (the priest providing an understandable explanation in order to "cross the chasm"), this is all to prepare the people for the Great Entrance where the Eucharist is brought out through the people and placed on the alter (early majority) and then the congregation is led through its collective preparation to ultimately receive it and incorporate it into their lives (late majority).  And then the skeptics and catechumens are there to watch and learn (laggards).

To me it seems like the Divine Liturgy is a good model to use to think about how to introduce, socialize, and gain acceptance for a new idea into a group of people. 

The Bible says in John 10:2 that "The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep."  To me this can be seen in the liturgy as Christ enters in a way that we can understand, is introduced with authority that we recognize, and in a way that facilitates the acceptance of the faithful and through its consistency, educates newcomers and skeptics.
 

Anyone who has worked anywhere for very long knows that when introducing a new idea, the proper approach is key to socialize the idea and gaining its adoption, and you have to understand the patterns that the people are accustomed to and use those to bring the transformative ideas into their daily workflows.

Many organization focus heavily on creating and implementing rituals that help teams to adopt new ideas and even to understand how to know what to work on for the day.  In scrum and Agile methodologies, these patterns are even often referred to as "rituals".  So it's interesting to me to see the parallels between these very new management methodologies and the ancient traditions of the church.

Why can’t it just be this way?

I’ve been thinking on the whole “In Genesis God made them male and female” statement that is often used as a retort to any kind of affirmation of the LGBTQ+ community.  

But in Genesis God also made “light and dark” and “day and night”.  But then it goes right off and says “and then there was evening and morning, the first day…”. And I’m like, wait, evening and morning, what happened to night and day?  What is this “evening and morning” stuff? 

Tell me, at 6:00 pm in the late fall in Oklahoma, is it night or day?  Dusk you say?  What the heck is that?  Are you trying to say that there is some kind of transitionary spectrum between night and day?

It’s like there’s a spectrum between night and day and nobody bats an eye, but put a spectrum between male and female (I dunno… like a rainbow or something) and everyone loses their minds.

I think this spectrum in sexual biology is well understood by the scientific community and we experience it clearly through the lives of our transgendered friends who exist and live alongside us.  

There are some compelling arguments about how we’ve interpreted the scriptural concepts regarding homosexuality as a concept, and as for transgendered people, just look in particular at the eunuchs in scripture.  Are they not transgendered? often surgically?  Yet there’s no condemnation of them in that regard.

When it comes to the sacrament of marriage, I can still see how the Church would limit that sacrament to being between a man and a woman, and the reason is because of how marriage is a picture of Christ and the church, and in the new creation and the “two becoming one flesh” that comes through having children.  The likeness of Christ and the Church is pictured in heterosexual marriage.  And this mystery is there for all, including people who don’t participate in the sacrament, to see in the sacrament.

But just because gay couple’s marriage isn’t sacramentalize, doesn’t seem to me to mean that they need to be excluded from the community of the Church.  This seems similar to me as to how married people can’t live the monastic life, nor can the monastic person participate in the sacrament of marriage, but neither are excluded from the life of the Church.

Why can’t it just be like this?  Why am I anxious about asking these questions?  

I guess this is why I am just a lay person with a bunch of opinions on stuff…cause some of it I just don’t get.

We lack harmony.

 In the book "The Body Keeps the Score" things like "mirror neurons" and other neurological systems are explained as to how we can experience empathy for others, and how this can help us to gain a feeling of safety and belonging within a group.  People who lack the ability or whose development of these abilities was stunted by trauma experience anxiety, depression, and other negative manifestations in their lives.  

Music, dancing, sports, and other activities that involve a synchronization of rhythm between individuals have shown to help people overcome these negative things and even relearn how to relate and feel safe around others. Many cultures have drum ceremonies, ritual dances, chants, and other collective activities and encourage a communal synchronicity as a part of normal life.  It turns out that these activities also create a sense of safety and well being within the individuals that participate in them as they synchronize with each other.  It's interesting to me that many of these rituals and traditions often are used to memorialize significant and sometime traumatic events within the community.  They are used not only to remember the event, but also to heal from it.

I think this collective synchronization is missing or has been corrupted in the white middle class culture that is predominate especially in "Red State" Evangelical America. The caricature of the "Karen" culture, and its male F150 driving counterpart are what I'm talking about.  There is a hyper individualistic focus in this culture that can be seen in everything from politics, religion,  and even sports and music.  The communal component of these activities is often minimalized in preference to a focus on the individual.  

There are sports and music but even in these paradigms, the individual performance seems to be focused on to the exclusion of the collective experience. A simple demonstration of this is the lack of dancing.  In fact in one of the largest Christian denominations in the US, dancing has long been held as something forbidden!

In our Politics it is an obsession with "individual rights", which are of course a cornerstone of western civilization as well as the source of many advancements in our ability to lift humanity out of oppression and misery.  However, taken too far and the concept of community quickly gets drown out.  When we make individual rights the premise of all philosophy, we gain a great deal of insight, however we also lose the concept of community in the process.

Our social interactions, especially in the disconnected times of this pandemic, but it certainly didn't start there, are very disconnected.  Things like playing music together, singing together, dancing, and other forms of collective synchronicity are becoming less and less common.  Even our worship traditions are catering more and more to delivery a message that can be applied individually.  

There is a place in our lives for the corporate, the communal, and these things are realized through activities like dance, music, and other ritual and traditional activities that bring us together to harmonize.

It's OK not to be the priest.

For the record, I'd like to say that I am an Orthodox Christian, I believe in the creed. I trust in the resurrection of Christ. But, I am not a priest.

I support gay marriage, I am pro choice, I am for open borders, I support the legalization of prostitution and all drugs. I realize that some of these positions may be in opposition of the "official" position of my faith, but that's why I'm happy to be a lay-person. In fact I've found a great deal of meaning in the Orthodox's lack of an unspoken expectation for everyone to 'go into ministry'. Growing up the way I did, there seemed to be an unspoken expectation that the only way to be a "real" Christian was to become either a minister or a missionary. If you were just a regular person with a job, then that was "OK I guess", but not really the fullness of your calling. I have found some comfort in being liberated from that expectation after becoming Orthodox.

I do believe that there is a meaningful and important role for the lay believer. God loves people and is going to welcome us all into his presence, and we'll experience that as bliss as long as we can leave our hatred for each other behind. I think that fundamentally, this is the truth of Orthodoxy. Within the body of Christ there is a role for those who must defend the tradition and doctrine as well as for those who are free to act more liberally. We all must trust in the grace of God as we extent love to those who are labeled as "outcasts", even those outside the faith.

The Breeding Ground of Demons

Maybe oversharing, but that's what I do sometimes: In the past 10 or 12 years, by being blessed with positive interactions with some amazing people I've been cured of marijuanaphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and most recently, through a series of events that I regard as almost miraculous, the last vestiges of some lingering trans and homophobia have finally evaporated away

These are real hangups that kept me from being able to relate to people, and they also kept me from knowing myself. They keep a person from self-discovered epiphanies. Instead you mindlessly repeat the dead habits of culture passed to you and accepted by you without examination.

These phobias are the breeding ground of demons, take that figuratively or literally, it doesn't matter. They are the enemy of faith as they cause you to stereotype, stigmatize, dehumanize, and demonize (create demons out of) the people around you that you should be getting to know and loving and learning from. These phobias live off fear, pride, and ego, all of which I have an abundance of. Believe me.

It was not only through reason alone, but primarily my faith in Christ and through the Church that I've been able to finally put these demons down. I could always understand the reasons, but a moralistic fear often kept me from letting those demons die. I can't really explain the mechanics of it, it is a mystery to me how it came about.  But by God's grace I'm glad to finally be free of those oppressors.

I'd recommend everyone do it. The world is a better place when you don't arbitrarily hate people just because you personified them as some kind of demon in your mind based on the group you identify them with.

Painful Symptoms

It seems like the institutionally abandoned, morally devoid, and socially misfit young white male with family problems to mass murdering school shooter pipeline is a fairly specific pathology. Maybe we should figure that out too while we're failing to take everyone's guns again. Is a society that creates people like that really all that better off just because we figure out how not to give them guns? I mean maybe we shouldn't let people like that have guns, but maybe we should try to help people not become like that too? The problem is that these kind of problems typically aren't something you can pawn off to the state, forget about, and go along your merry way. I think there may be something terribly wrong with us if our activism in the face of these now very typified events are completely focused on yelling at politicians and at each other about gun control and none of it is focused on what is wrong with our communities and institutions such that we are repeatedly manifesting this very specific homicidal ideation in young men. The gun control argument is primarily a convenient scapegoat that we all know will ultimately fail, which is OK, because then we won't have to deal with any actual change, and we can still blame it on the politicians instead of taking any real personal and possibly uncomfortable ownership of the problem. Taking the blame like this is one of the reasons a corrupt and perverse political class can persist despite their obvious incapacity to be anything like something we ought to respect. It's the true value exchange, power in exchange for blame. The school shootings are a painful symptom. Blaming politicians is just a pain killer.

Psalm 103

In our evening prayer service we read Psalm 103 where King David describes different aspects of the interactions of creation even small details like the springs of water and the habitation of rabbits and goats and sparrows and the order that God has established that allows for all of this.

At first it seemed strange to me that we'd regularly be prescribed this pastoral scripture, almost pagan even.  But then one day I imagined David writing it as he looked around him and marveled at what he saw.  Not only at creation, and not only at his place within it, but even at his ability to ponder it and that it is in fact real and beyond him.

Sometimes I think we get caught up in our minds and amidst the abstract creations of our own imagination.  Our ability to even do this is amazing and unique among creatures, but we can and tend to create entire realities in our heads and can quickly begin to take objective reality for granted, dismissing it completely as an uninteresting given.

Who cares what rabbits and sparrows do when we aren't watching them?  Shouldn't we be articulating and defending the intricacies of the ideology we've chosen to identify with instead?  And we continue to abstract from our place on the earth into our heads to a point that we don't even regard the sun or the moon or the winds or the waters that sustain not only us but every other living thing that we also ignore, even our fellow man.  

And when we do this our world becomes incredibly small, able to fit nicely within our own minds.  (Which in and of itself is an incredible ability, to model a whole little world in our minds.)  But we can't live there, it can't sustain us.  We need to take some time to be reminded of the very big and intricate and amazingly interconnected physical existence that we live in.  And as we see our place it in is both precariously similar to those irrational beasts that instinctively seek the nurturing of nature to survive and at the same time wildly and extraordinarily different from them in almost every regard evidenced plainly by our very ability to consider it.

For me Psalm 103 is a reliable source of grounding as well as a reminder of the paradoxical idea that we are both creatures and made in the image of God and that creation serves to act as a medium in which we are able to exist and commune with God.

"He sendeth forth springs in the valleys; between the mountains will the waters run. They shall give drink to all the beasts of the field; the wild asses will wait to quench their thirst. Beside them will the birds of the heaven lodge, from the midst of the rocks will they give voice. He watereth the mountains from His chambers; the earth shall be satisfied with the fruit of Thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and green herb for the service of men, To bring forth bread out of the earth; and wine maketh glad the heart of man. To make his face cheerful with oil; and bread strengtheneth man's heart. The trees of the plain shall be satisfied, the cedars of Lebanon, which Thou hast planted. There will the sparrows make their nests; the house of the heron is chief among them. The high mountains are a refuge for the harts, and so is the rock for the hares. He hath made the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down. Thou appointedst the darkness, and there was the night, wherein all the beasts of the forest will go abroad."

I, Irrational

In order to be completely free, an individual must be free from the threat of coercion.  Coercion is ultimately enforced by the threat of death.  One may be able to endure pain and discomfort and frustrate the will of those attempting to coerce you with those methods, but if you cannot endure death, then your advisary need only to be willing to kill you in order to bend you to their will.  For instance, Jesus Christ experiences the fullness of liberty because he can choose to die, and then raise himself up again.  His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection was an example of that choice.  He, being God and immortal, cannot be coerced by threats of death.

If a person can choose to die, then even coercive tactics enforced by death become impotent.  Belief in the resurrection of Christ, and his promise to extend that resurrection to others, enables a person to be liberated from the threat of death.  Whether or not the person, or Jesus Christ actually has the power to resurrect the believer is irrelevant, all that matters is that the person believes that death has been undone.  This effect isn't limited to Christians, however Jesus did exemplify the principle.

It IS an irrational position, but the rational position is subject to death, so it is by its own nature not capable of enabling freedom.  Impending death forces the rational individual to subject themselves to the passions that can be imbibed in while still living as well as to the very maintenance of life itself.  Death stands as an end to the individual, and to meaning itself.  The threat of death either effectively coerces the rational individual, or causes them to accept death to end the suffering of existence.  The "irrational" individual can choose to die and still have hope, and can therefore also choose resist coercion, even unto death, without giving up on life.

One may say "I don't believe in life after death, however I can still choose to die for reasons that give me hope, such as a better world for my children, or a legacy for my own name", but this is simply accepting the irrational position, as death's putting an end to one's existence renders one's hope meaningless and irrational.  

I'm not a mathematician but there seems to be a corollary principle here in irrational and rational numbers.  The irrational position isn't called irrational because it is crazy, but only because it cannot be represented using symbols contained within the context of the rational.  Super natural principles are similar in that they can be described by borrowing terms from the rational world, but their premise has no objective representation there.

So, overcoming coercion requires us to calculate life's meaning using an irrational symbol in order to be able to reason beyond the limits of death, similar to how we calculate the circumference of a circle by using pi.

So what are you going to do? Crucify him?

People say "If God wanted to forgive he could just do it by saying "I forgive you" and it's done." And that's true for your sins against God, but what about your sins against other people? Is it just for God to forgive you of those too? What about your victim? Where is justice for them? The truth is that in this act of mercy God does something unjust, and in extending mercy unjustly he takes responsibility for the offense upon himself. And those who cry that justice was taken from them have a legitimate claim, especially in a human sense. In a very real moral sense, by offering effective mercy to those who have harmed others, God is acting unjustly, he is in fact guilty. It was Christ who was given authority to be the judge of all correct? And as judge he offers mercy, unjustly. It's true that God is God and he can do whatever he wants, but what if he actually cares about our perceived claims against Him? What if he realizes that these claims are a barrier to our reconciliation? He could simply say "Get over it an accept my mercy for yourself as well as for your victimizer", but he doesn't leave it at that. What about the claims that God was unjust in his interventions throughout human history? How often have you heard him brought up on charges for killing the first born in Egypt, or even simply for NOT intervening in other horrific events? At the end of the day we bring charges against him for a) being God but not living up to our expectations of Him and b) forgiving not our own sin, but the sins of those we think he should instead execute judgement. God's response though isn't to withhold mercy, instead it is to take upon himself the responsibility for his own mercy. We accuse him of "a" and "b" above, and he accepts our condemnation of him for it, even unto the cross. So now as we approach reconciliation with him, the only claim we can make is to despise our own existence, as all other charges are acknowledged and dealt with through his own death, and once again overcome through his own resurrection. In this light, hell is simply the rejection of this and the choice to live in bitterness of our own existence. What was it Christ was accused of? Wasn't it the crime of claiming to be God as well as claiming to forgive sin? His response? Guilty as charged. So when people blame God for being unjust I often simply respond, "Well what are you going to do? Crucify him?"

Social Media Matters

I quite often hear this criticism of libertarians that we should "get out from behind our keyboards and go do stuff that matters."

It irks me. First of all, it simply shows that the people making that criticism likely have little interaction with activism outside of social media. If this wasn't true then they would clearly see Libertarians actively and physically involved in many things from lobbying at the capitol, to organizing campaigns, helping out with causes, etc.

But secondly is this idea that somehow having conversations on social media is meaningless and fruitless. I believe that our ability to reason together afforded by the means of social media is one of the greatest change agents of our time. To dismiss this is to dismiss the importance of human reason all together.

We are having conversations and people are being exposed to thoughts and ideas that they were previously well insulated from.

Take for instance the seemingly silly and simple "Taxation is theft" campaign currently rounding the meme-dom. Do you realize that this simple phrase is something that many people have never even considered before? They've simply blindly, by no fault of their own mind you, accepted the premise that the state has a prior claim to all property.

Regardless of how they respond to the presentation of the idea, the fact of the matter is that a powerful message conveying some uncomfortable cognitive dissonance has made its way past the mental firewall inculcated by their cultural upbringing, and it's all because of the ease of communication that internet technology has opened up to us.

The human mind, absent mental illness or willful ignorance, will simply not allow cognitive dissonance to persist, it is hard wired to resolve it. Any challenging of an idea with a weak premise is effective in eventually changing the public perception of the idea and social media as well as similar technology is only causing this to happen on an exponentially increasing scale for many different issues.

It is anything but meaningless and fruitless to be able to converse and reason and argue with one another in a way that affords physical safety and a large degree of freedom, in fact it may be the most important thing happening to humanity in quite some time.

Corptocracy or Democratic Socialism, either way it's all the same.

In thinking about the rise in popularity of Bernie Sanders, I will have to say that I do share in their concern about the power of the corptocracy. Big business has used its money (shareholder money) to influence government even to the tune of trillions of dollars in bailouts and other more abstract forms of corporate welfare.

This does irritate me and my sense of justice can envision legitimate policy by which restitution is demanded for the wealth that was taken from the public treasury and put directly into the pockets of those with power and influence. I wouldn't mind seeing this money taken back, and if it was used to pay for schools and roads and healthcare or to bail individuals out of their own mortgage crises then so be it.

What I don't understand about the Sanders craze is the accepted forgone conclusion that taxation on the individual will have to increase as well. That is when this flippant idea being tossed around called "Democratic Socialism" begins to scare me.

How about we tax the corporations, particularly those we've bailed out and provided welfare, and leave the individual alone?

I know some will say "Any expense you put on the corporation will eventually be passed on to the consumer via higher prices or to the worker via lower wages anyway." While this might be true the fact of the matter is that the consumer and the employee have a much better position to negotiate prices and wages directly with the corporation they are dealing with than they do with a government extracting their wealth directly via forced taxation.

That is a pragmatic reality that should provide a secondary support to the moral premise that government does not have the legitimate authority to tax the wealth of the individual, which it did not create, whereas it does have the legitimate authority to tax and regulate the corporations that it does create (so long as individuals are free to operate outside the corporate structure). Good policy should be that which encourages business while providing the appropriate revenue for a limited government, and that which leaves the individual to their own choices.

It's frustrating that the political spectrum is polarized in such a way that you must choose between crony capitalism and democratic socialism, which are essentially two sides to the same coin. It is particularly frustrating considering that each side of the dichotomy holds the complementary pieces of a workable solution, but each side also holds diametrically opposed positions that keep these pieces from ever coming together.

The fiscally conservative coupled with the socially liberal policies that enable a vibrant and free society can only currently be found in the Libertarian philosophy, which is of course, derided and bedeviled for different reasons by each side of the mainstream political duopoly.

As long as the margins between the opposing sides remains split around 50/50, I think things will continue relatively unchanged. The encouraging thing is that the Libertarian philosophy is uniquely poised at this time to be able to leverage the margins and bridge those gaps; possibly facilitating some reasonable and effective change.

Mental Firewalls

Much of your worldview is shaped not by reason or experience on the subject, but by the inculcation of fear through the application of systematic messages and subtle abuse such as humiliation.  Unfortunately many of our beliefs regarding religion and politics are formed this way.  This is a misuse of this function of your mind which is designed to protect you from traumatic events.  In fact the symptoms of post traumatic stress are caused by this same mechanism in your mind.  When a stimuli similar to the trauma is encountered, the mind starts to attempt to protect itself from the trauma by triggering the neural pathways created from the original trauma.

This technique actually creates biological neural pathways in your brain, actual physical alignments of your neurons that "fire" a certain way upon encountering the stimuli a they were formed around.  I call them mental firewalls.  So your response is more like a mechanical movement than it is a rational reflection.  Like Pavlov's dog who could be stimulated to drool upon the ringing of a bell, it was a biological mechanical reaction, not the response to a rational conclusion.

So it shouldn't be surprising that if you disrupt the ability for these established neural pathways to fire in response to stimuli, that you'd free the person's mind to consider what they actually THINK about the stimuli.  The physical nature of these pathways is such that they can be disrupted with electromagnets, it can also be done with drugs.

Here is an example of scientist using electromagnets to accomplish bypassing the minds mental firewalls: https://www.rt.com/uk/318881-magnets-brain-immigration-religion/ 

If you don't have an electromagnet or drugs you can also use words.  If you can begin a thought process in the person's mind using words that do NOT trigger the "firewall" of preconditioned neural pathways, and then suddenly link by analogy or metaphor that idea to an idea that does trigger the stimuli, then you create a kind of conflict or paradox, a cognitive dissonance that the mind will work to resolve ultimately "rewiring" the neural pathway that make up the firewall.

For instance, if I show you a suffering child, and then I show you the child healed and happy, I've safely entered your mind without triggering your firewalls (or at least without triggering the firewalls I'm attacking).  Then I tell you that the child was healed with marijuana.  Since marijuana is a word that triggers an inculcated fear response (a firewall word), the thought of the healed child conflicts with the irrational fear of marijuana, and eventually weakens or rewrites the neural pathways associated with that irrational fear.

If you consider that in our culture religion, education, and politics are highly standardized and interrelated you can see that there are many people operating almost exclusively out of paradigms built upon these firewalls.  Almost like zombies in that they are not living a life based on beliefs they have reasoned through and come to own, but are simply responding to stimuli that either trigger a pre-programmed mental firewall or not.  This creates a pseudo objective reality that can be controlled through propaganda.  With this in mind you also see the importance of spreading ideas that tear down these firewalls and force people to consider reality with their own minds.

RISE UP AMERICA KILL ISLAM

Today I was stopped at a railway crossing waiting on a train.  I'm looking at all the cars on the train and trying to guess what's in them, reading the graffiti, etc. Then I saw something that shocked me, and upon reflection, greatly concerned me.  Some very crude graffiti (not like the stuff that is actually very artistic) ignorantly screamed in big red letters: "RISE UP AMERICA KILL ISLAM".  I was too slow with my camera to take a picture, for a few seconds I just sat and stared as it went by.  It was shocking because of what it said and the grotesque and uncreative way in which it was presented but also because of how it stood out, like a sore, from the other messages and art painted on the train's cars.  Then I began reflecting on it. 

The other graffiti on the train was colorful and bold, artistically done and although I don't know what it communicated, it intrigued me, it even captured my imagination a bit to ponder its meaning.  It was the art of a sub-culture that I'm not familiar with, that seems to have its own stories and even language.  Where did it come from?  Who wrote it? How far away is it from the person who painted it?  What were they like?  What was their purpose in painting it?  Maybe it's gang signs, or simply eccentric street artists, or an expressive teenager in love.  It was definitely, and almost comfortingly different.  It wasn't a corporate brand, or a cliche phrase, it was its own thing.  To me, that's kind of cool.

Yes, it was vandalism, and it seemed irrational, but it was nearly, if not completely harmless,  and maybe even the contributor of some beauty into the otherwise dull view of a passing train.  If there is to be crime, it seems to me, then this is what we want:  Artistically gifted vandals expressing their irrationality in ugly places and making those places a little prettier as a result of their crime.

But the other, it was just more of the parroted drivel of the demagogues on television.  I knew exactly where it came from.  It was born of ignorance and bigotry, there was no need to be curious as to the personal insight of the author.  It was just copy and paint hate.  What personal connection or interaction could the vandal who painted that obscene challenge to America have with Islam?  How many Muslims do they know?  I can almost guarantee none, and if any, it's on the basis of a peaceful coexistence in their community. The unique and colorful language and art of the train graffiti that caused me to imagine a culture of its own expressing itself was suddenly sullied with the bland and obtuse propaganda of the network news.  It concerns me, and it should concern all of us that the hateful rhetoric of the Islamophobes and war mongers can penetrate this far.

Yes, it was also vandalism, and it also seemed irrational, but this time it wasn’t harmless.  It was exposing the symptoms of the sickness of our society.  Of a society that can nurture and transmit hatred to the depths of our most independent sub-cultures and fester even there an unwarranted hatred of people they don’t know.  “RISE UP AMERICA KILL ISLAM”: words that have little meaning to the vandal who scrawled it barely legibly across the train, except for what he was told by the television, and through those peddlers of hatred that seem to permeate all of our media. 

Sit down America.  Love your neighbor.  

Maybe I should grab a can of paint and catch that train!

Real Solutions for Gun Violence

I can see from most of my left leaning friends that you have lapped up the anti-gun agenda.  I believe you've done this with good intentions, however you've also perched yourself on a moral pedestal and are using that position to berate peaceful gun owners and attacking and insulting an important part of their culture and heritage with a very disrespectful and pompous tone.  It is a losing battle as guns will not be going anywhere in America anytime soon, so all you are achieving is to further divide the country against each other.  There are actual solutions to the problem of gun violence that don't require us to pin the blame on responsible gun owners.

If you look at the numbers, mass shootings are not the incidents by which to deal with gun deaths.  Accidents and assaults are by far the real problem, and I'll agree, they are a problem.  Way too many people are killed or injured by accidents and assaults involving firearms in our county.  However the way to address this isn't to attack the American culture and encroach upon people's liberties.

Let's look at accidents.  The way to prevent firearm accidents is the same way you prevent accidents with any other piece of equipment:  training and education.  The NRA and organizations like it used to provide excellent firearms training and education, they even did it in public schools.  However, the left has purposefully been demonizing weapons and has been increasingly attempting to prohibit them by law.  Not to mention making it difficult to even teach a firearms safety class in school.  This forces organizations like the NRA to focus their resources on lobbying against these measures (measures the American system of government has no authority to dabble in in the first place), instead of on training and education to promote responsibility in our culture.  

Firearms are a reality in our culture, as are cars, which is why they should both have a place in our educational environment to so prepare children to live in our culture.  The current educational propaganda is focused making children terrified of guns, going so far as to discipline them for playing cops and robbers, or for making a gun out of a pastry.  This is an irrational approach that only serves to demonized firearms and doing so only makes them more desirable to someone nurturing a homicidal ideation.  Education should focus on normalization and familiarity, which removes the mystical allure of the weapon and allows children to view it as the common tool that it is.

Training would go far to prevent firearm accidents, it would likely also have an affect on assaults, however ending the drug war would likely reduce firearm assaults more than any other measure.  The illegal drug trade is more common in areas and among the demographic where firearm assaults are higher.  This is because black markets such as the drug trade do not provide access to the courts for dispute resolution, so people tend to resort to violence.  This simply doesn't happen on anywhere near the same scale with legal transactions.  The black market also provides the money for the guns to facilitate the assaults.  By legalizing the drug trade the black market margins will be dried up, there will be less money to purchase black market arms, and disputes would have access to the courts for resolution, instead of solving them on the streets. 

We live in a gun culture, and a frontal attack on that culture is only good for creating animosity and division.  The responsible and sane solution to the problem of gun violence is to accept the reality of our culture and create policies that make it safer.  Education will absolutely reduce firearm accidents.  Getting rid of black markets through legalization will  absolutely reduce firearm assaults on our streets.  These are two real solutions that don't require the government to encroach upon the rights of anyone, and will have a profound effect on the safety of our communities.  Why wouldn't we try this first?  The only reason I can think of is that we are more interested in disarming the people than we actually are in facilitating their safety.

 

Prohibition is Vain Sword Bearing.

When the state bears the sword to enforce drug prohibition, it does so in vain as doing so not only fails to accomplish what it set out to accomplish, but in fact accomplishes the opposite.  Prohibition is merely the state flexing its might in order to be seen as mighty.  This is vanity.  It is not done for our good, and it only rewards and increases evil.

Prohibition makes the authority of the state illegitimate. By agressing against peaceful people and barring them access to the civil courts, prohibition delegitmizes the government that enforces it. Biblically, a government that enforces prohibition does not fit the definition of an authority that ought to be obeyed:

“For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”

Romans 13:4 NKJV

Prohibition delegitmizes good government and legitimizes violence.

Prohibition doesn't prevent the prohibited item from coming to market, it only prohibits those involved in the transaction from accessing the courts to resolve their disputes.  Prohibition guarantees fraud as victims cannot appeal to the civil courts for fear of the criminal ones.  Prohibition prohibits the state from hearing the pleas of injustice from those victimized as a part of the drug trade.  It only allows the state to deal with everyone involved as a criminal.

Prohibition incentivizes violence because those parties in conflict have been disenfranchised from the proper role of the government, the administration of justice.  If they are facing the sword of the state simply for entering into the transaction, what difference does it make if they face the same sword for cheating, stealing, or killing?  So fraud and violence are encouraged and violence becomes a much more common method of conflict resolution.

The incentive to deal honestly is actually greatly diminished by prohibition.  If the state removes the risk of the sword from the transaction itself, but appropriately keeps bearing it upon those who commit acts of fraud and violence, then the risk of committing fraud or violence becomes much higher than the risk of simply dealing honestly.  This makes our communities safer as drug transactions would become normalized and as prone to violence as a trip to the store for bread and milk.

As a drug policy, prohibition not only fails to rid or even reduce the amount of drugs on the streets, but it also invites violence into our communities.  It is prohibition, the misapplication of the sword of the state, and not the drug dealing itself, that must be targeted and eliminated in order to protect the peace. 

Can we lose our humanity through technology?

I really enjoyed this talk by Father Thomas Hopko that he gave a while back at St Elijah in Oklahoma City.  He really brings up some powerful questions for me concerning what it means to be human, and how allowing technology to augment us too drastically may threaten our humanity.  His point of view on the end times isn't that things will get "worse" in the way that most people consider it, his suggestion is that people will cease to be human as we try to engineer away every aspect of our humanity that we don't find appealing, yet somehow still attempt to call it Christianity.  The verse came to mind "My strength is made perfect in weakness", meaning that at some point I may have to say no to some awesome technology and remain weak, so that I am purposefully human, weak and dependent on God.  Not to eschew technology as something evil, but to do so to purposefully guard my reliance upon God as something sacred.

I think there is a ethical and even a biological element to consider to all of this as well.  It is wonderful that we live in an age that I can learn to do almost any task by simply youtubing it and mimicking the instructor.  The learning curve for so many things has drastically been shortened because of technology, however I can't help but to wonder if we aren't missing out on some other aspects of life that may be just as important, the chaos, uncertainty, and humility that is found when you have to figure something out all on your own, or even depend on some time in prayer to seek the answers.

In what way are we affecting brain development if our brains never experience the terror of that abyss called the unknown?  The humiliating aspect of learning something new?  That place where we find ourselves reaching out to others and even to God for answers as we try to solve a complicated problem?  If technology allows us to overcome that, and we grow accustomed to not having to experience it, will we even endeavor to take on challenges that haven't already been conquered and figured out by someone else?  Will we even be physically capable of challenging the status quo to seek something better?

Plenty of Hope

I'm not an expert, nor am I a Muslim. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful of anyone. And maybe I have it all wrong, and if I do, please chime in and educate me. But it seems to me that the thing about Islam is that in some ways it can change. Not the religion or the scripture itself, but in how it is carried out and understood by it's believers. Their approach to their scripture is not the same as the approach of other religions, particularly not that of Western Christianity (which, by the way, has a different approach to scripture than much of the rest of Christianity).

From my understanding, there is no apostolic (obviously) understanding that is passed from generation to generation, but instead, a deference to scholars and thinkers who can apply the message of the Koran to their current context. There is no central authority, but instead a general consensus that develops over time, obviously with outliers.

In many ways this is like the Post Reformation Christian handling of the Christian Scriptures in their rejection of the Roman Church . The differences being in the vestiges of interpretation that are left from the pre-reformed and ancient times (the great Church Councils, etc) that most all of modern Christianity accepts as authoritative by default, even while implicitly rejecting the actual authority of those bodies of believers (but I digress). The point is that modern reformed Christianity also claims to have no central earthly authority and defers to a consensus of scholars (theologians, authors, etc) to ascertain meaning that is, over time, unofficially accepted by general consensus, and also with its fair share of outliers.

Now, from the stand point of holding to a true interpretation of Scripture, I would say that overall this is not really a good thing for Christianity and has lead to many problems, as the Church's tradition helps to protect the context and original meaning of what was written, and departing from that authority is what opens the doors to heresies. Particularly this method threatens the actual gospel and our definite understanding of the person of Christ (which were some of the primary concerns of the early Church councils).

However, when speaking of Islam, and again, me not being a Muslim, I would say that the way in which I understand their method of interpretation leads me to have great hope, because the consensus seems to be building toward an Islam that marginalizes the violent sects, focuses on the love and forgiveness of God, and encourages believers to act in charity and good will toward their fellow man.

If this is the case then one can imagine that there is plenty of opportunity and even theological basis for Muslims and Christians and people who believe in peaceful philosophies of life to come together and really explore the differences that they have and the similarities that they share and to do so with mutual respect. I would think that people of every religion would see this as the ultimate opportunity for evangelism.

A wink and a nod.

Personally and as an Orthodox Christian, I can't seem to justify homosexual behavior. I have been reading and considering a lot from all sides and the arguments are compelling, however I can't let go of the idea that our physical nature as human beings is heterosexual, and spiritually our union is a picture of Christ and the Church, not only in a sense of sacrificial love, but also in the creative sense of how the words of our marriage covenant become flesh through childbearing, in a like way that Christ became flesh by means of God's covenant with mankind.

That being said I cannot help but to empathize with those who are homosexual.  I cannot imagine the struggle it must be, particularly in our culture.  The standard counsel given to homosexual Christians seems to simply be that they must be chaste from sex.  And I agree with this, theologically, however I also shudder.  It's a burden that almost all heterosexuals could not and do not bear, even the most pious being able to flee to marriage and safely contain their passions.  However, it seems that for the homosexual, in most Christian circles, including my own, that is not a possibility, and I understand and agree with it, while I still lament it.

It seems so reasonable to me for a Christian homosexual to be able to also flee to a committed relationship to contain their own passions and also enjoy the other fruits of such a bond.  In many ways I can truly see how God could be glorified in their commitment to Christ and to each other and in their desire to honor each other and to contain their sexual passions within that commitment.  

This may seem strange, but I am heartbroken that I cannot fully join them them in rejoicing in such a covenant.  I can't because I can't deny our human nature.  Not our human nature to love or the admirable qualities of commitment, I'm simply speaking of our actual and ideal physical nature, that we were created as male and female.

I'm saying this to say that I won't be advocating for Christian Churches to recognize homosexual marriage, because I don't believe it is appropriate.  However, there is a big part of my heart that is happy that there are Churches who are willing to see this differently than I do, and provide gay couples, as couples, a place to seek the same grace and mercy that I seek daily from Christ.  I cannot support it, but by grace, and seeking God's mercy, I applaud it. I at least can give it a wink and a nod.

Thank God for Sinners

Do you know the kind of people I like to be around?  Moderately honest sinners.  They're the best.  They're people just being who they are, trying for happiness, trying to extract meaning from life.  Sometimes they'll lie about it, but you can always tell, and you're glad for it.  They're sinners, they know it.  "Sin" just means to miss the mark, but the impressive thing is that they're taking a shot at it.  Some of them are atheists and Christian and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and I'm sure there are others too.  They're straight and gay, single, married, divorced.  Some are rich, some are poor.  Some are really nice and a lot of fun, some are real jerks and total bores.  Every once in a while they'll try on the suit of a prefabricated persona, just for a break from the chore it is to discover their own, but you can always tell that it doesn't quite fit, and you appreciate them for it.  They can't even do that right, thank God.  Somehow we've been convinced to applaud the story book successes and then we use them to measure our own happiness.  But I've changed my perspective and have come to see that the sinners and strugglers really show us the glory of what it is to be human and how precious is a person with personal passions and heart longing for happiness and purpose.