Stephen Roney's Blog, page 61
December 10, 2023
The Pool at Bethesda
5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
A dramatization of this passage from John came up in an episode of “The Chosen” I viewed recently.
Something stands out that tells us this is a parable.
Jesus asks, “Do you want to get well?”
In the literal world, this question makes no sense. Of course anyone ill or lame wants to get well. Anyone coming to the Pool of Bethesda comes in an attempt to get well.
This anomaly tells us the man’s lameless is symbolic; an objective correlative of a spiritual condition, which cannot be otherwise represented.
And his physical paralysis is an apt representation of spiritual paralysis, of dispiritedness, which primitive tribes in Africa call loss of soul,” and the modern psychologists call “depression.” How often is depression experienced as “not being able to get out of bed?”
The parable diagnoses the immediate cause: the victim is caught in a bind, a Catch-22. He is lame because he cannot make it into the Pool of Bethesda when the water is stirring. He cannot make it to the Pool of Bethesda when the water is stirring because he is lame. And he has been trapped in this bind for 38 years.
Such binds are always the cause of depression. They tend to arise, as in the book Catch-22, due to some oppressive or malicious authority, in order to exert a more perfect control. This too is implied clearly enough in the passage; in the absurd accusation by the “Jewish leaders” that the man is committing a sin by being healed on the Sabbath. He is morally required, they insist, to keep lying there. By implication, their demands are the real, ultimate source of his spiritual paralysis. They are keeping him from the “living waters” of true spirit.
This paralysis is a paralysis of the will. Their will is paralysing his will. This is why Jesus’s question is important: does the man want to get well?
The answer might well be no—for he is trapped where he is by guilt, if a false sense of guilt imposed by impossible demands. Most of the depressed are depressed to punish themselves for imagined crimes. And therefore he deserves to be lame, and does not deserve to be healed. And so he fears being healed.
Is the man is cured by Jesus and by faith in Jesus? So it would seem, and so one might say the solution is faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But that is too simple; that does not really fit the parable. The parable makes clear that, until some time after he is cured, he has no idea who Jesus is. This is just some random guy telling him to get up and walk. Why should he put his faith in some random guy? Is this wise, or admirable?
But making the attempt is an assertion of the will.
But why does he now have that courage?
He is apparently primed for this simply by describing his situation at the pool clearly. By formulating and thereby seeing things as they really are. Doing so presumably makes the absurdity of his situation apparent to himself: he is lame because he is lame because he is lame. All such double-binds are necessarily, by definition, illogical. It follows that, by looking at it closely, the illogic should be revealed, and the problem evaporate. “And the truth shall set you free.”
This all sounds simple; but it is immensely difficult emotionally. One has been groomed to be wracked with guilt. That is how the malicious exert control. Therefore one is terrified to look at one’s own situation too closely, for fear that one’s supposed guilt be fully revealed, and one is sure that it is horrible. One must be prepared, in effect, to throw oneself on the mercy of God, expecting the worst possible consequences.
Which is what this man does, by speaking frankly to a stranger; apparently trying to explain why he deserves his own lameness. He does not answer, “yes, I want to be healed.” He seems instead to try to explain why he is lame. That breaks the spell. He sees it is nonsense. It is not his fault. Then, immediately challenged again by the oppressive authority about breaking the Sabbath, he is now able to appeal to a higher authority. He lets Jesus, whom he now identifies, take responsibility. Which is as much as to say, objective morality and logic. Jesus is the Logos.
This is why the parable ends with Jesus telling the paralytic not to sin. Not that he was necessarily a great sinner before; we are all sinners. But keeping a commitment to the straight and moral path, to truth and the good, inoculates one from being endlessly left bleeding in ditches. Guilt is the weapon the malicious use to control. The devil can use any sin against you.
Now get up and walk.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 9, 2023
Muslim Immigration
I am loath to say anything against Islam. Any religion is better than no religion, and any of the ethical monotheisms is infinitely better than no religion. Living in Saudi Arabia, I felt I had far more in common and could be more relaxed with devout Muslims there than with secularists in Canada. Despite the fact that attending a Catholic mass was illegal.
However, many people are belatedly beginning to realize that Muslim immigration is a problem for Western democracies. We have seen and heard the demands for Jewish genocide. We have seen the unpredictable stabbing and bombing sprees. We have seen the grooming gangs and rapes.
Muslims do not assimilate politically, and liberal democracy does not assimilate Islam. There is a reason why there are no functioning democracies in the Middle East.
To start with, Islam is opposed to the separation of church and state. The state executed Christianity’s founder, who said “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Judaism, has the tradition of the prophets, who lived alone in the desert and railed against the inequities of the state. But in Islam, the prophet, the original religious authority, was also the secular authority: Muhammed was an emperor. No separation. This means there is no leeway for religious experimentation among citizens. In a Muslim state, any non-Muslim is an alien. Conversely, any Muslim living in a non-Muslim state must see himself as eternally alien, never assimilated, until and unless he can seize political control and institute shariah law.
This is a problem for non-Muslim neighbours, and for any liberal-democratic regime. Note that elsewhere in the world, wherever there is a Muslim majority, they will demand separation and Muslim government.
Any Muslim who remains nominally Muslim yet does not fight for this is a bad Muslim; irreligious and unprincipled. Not the sort of citizen you want either.
If Islam comes to power in any jurisdiction, democracy is also no longer desirable. The state is supposed to be a theocracy, not a democracy. Democracy is blasphemy.
Islam also does not believe in human equality or the right to life in the way Christianity does. Christians believe God loves all of us, even sinners. Islam believes he hates unbelievers, who have rejected his sovereignty. He has issued a commandment to all true believers to kill them. So, no right to life, let alone equal status, for kaffirs.
This is not “Islamism” or “Muslim extremism.” This is Islam, properly understood. It is perfectly reasonable, given the starting premises. God is God. We do not see if it we are raised in a Judeo-Christian culture.
Islam of course does not believe in freedom of religion or freedom of conscience. There is no distinction between individual morality and the law. Why would there be? “If the government is not there to enforce morality,” asked a Muslim friend once, “Why is it there?” So of course, Islam demands such things as laws against homosexuality, laws against adultery, laws against fornication, laws requiring modest dress, laws requiring religious observances, and the like. One is certainly not permitted to choose some different religion: converting away from Islam is punishable by death, since it involves a wilful rejection of God’s sovereignty.
All this is obviously a problem in a liberal society.
Since Constantine, Western nations have been held together as civil societies by their shared Christian values. As in a couple, so long as fundamental values are shared, and can be appealed to, disagreements can generally be worked out. This used to be universally understood.
Unfortunately, with the Reformation, this civil consensus was shattered in Europe, and much conflict ensued. This was then resolved by the rise, toward the end of the 18th century, of the “Enlightenment” doctrines of liberalism. This has worked well enough for the West since. There is a reason why the civil monuments in Washington D.C. look reminiscent of pagan temples.
But it has always been naïve to think that liberalism could be compatible with all religious beliefs. It is reasonably compatible with Hinduism, Buddhism, or Confucianism, all of which recognize a separation of church and state. It is not compatible with Shintoism. It is not compatible with paganism, which resurfaced in Germany as Nazism, more recently in France and America as postmodernism; it is not compatible with atheistic Marxism; and it is not compatible with Islam.
Now all the major Western nations have let in large numbers of Muslim immigrants. Our leaders have gotten us into this problem out of their own sheer ignorance of religion and of Islam.
But then, Marxists and postmodernists are at least as big a problem.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Kids Need Consistent Guidance
No Comment
December 8, 2023
It's Continuing
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
An Appeal to Heaven
Mad Maduro
I predict that nothing will come of the current Venezuelan threat to annex most of Guyana.
Of course, the reason they suddenly want to do so is that a large reserve of oil has been discovered off the Guyanese coast.
How large? At least 11 billion barrels, putting it in the top twenty producers worldwide, with the second largest reserves per capita, after Kuwait. And there may be more.
I doubt, busy as it is elsewhere, the US will let Venezuela swoop in and take that oil, any more than they let Saddam’s Iraq grab Kuwait’s oil back in the 90s. The geopolitical stakes are too high. If the US is overextended, Britain or Canada, plus the Caribbean nations, as fellow members of the Commonwealth, might, at American urging, take up the cause, or join a “coalition of the willing.” The more so since Guyana is an English -speaking democracy, and Venezuela a failing dictatorship.
Or Brazil might. The Guyanese region actually has no roads connecting it to Venezuela. The only road runs through Brazil. In order to attack Guyana in any force, Venezuela will actually first need to invade Brazil. Brazil is not likely to be too keen on that, and they are much bigger and wealthier than Venezuela. Rather, a Venezuelan incursion into Brazil would give Brazil an excuse to go in and take Venezuela itself, with its own oil, while America approved.
Brazil has already sent a contingent, if a small contingent, of troops to the border. Ensuring at least that it will come to blows.
Might the Venezuelans try instead a landing from the sea?
Perfect. Plays into the American or British strength: sea and air power.
Presumably this is all for Venezuelan domestic consumption, an attempt to rally the people behind the government by whipping up a foreign enemy. It is the sign of a government in desperation.
If Maduro is desperate and reckless enough to go through with it, I expect the result to be similar to what happened when the Argentine government tried the same trick over the Falkland Islands, or the Greek government over Cyprus. The main result will be the collapse of the Maduro regime.
Let’s hope nobody gets killed along the way.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 7, 2023
Calling for the Genocide of Jews
I’ve been saying for years that we are sleepwalking into everything about Weimar Germany that ended with the rise of Hitler. The parallels are getting faster and more furious. We are now at the point of public calls for Jewish genocide.
It begins with the rejection of conventional ethics. Weimar Germany, endorsing Nietzsche’s scorn for “slave morality,” was a place where anything goes, or went, at first, and most appealingly to the average German, in sexual affairs. But the wall between right and wrong was broken down, and so one could just as properly, in principle, murder and steal. And the greatest danger was not the couple in the bar, but those with great power—the bureaucracy, the industrialists the government. Once the invisible restraints of morality are gone, they can use their power entirely for their own self-interest.
All that mattered was the triumph of the will.
And we see this again in our day. We rejected conventional morality again in the 1960s, first, and most appealingly, in sexual affairs. “Free love.”
And now morality has broken down in the halls of power. Governments and industrialists are colluding to run their Lolita islands, to silence dissent, to manipulate the news, to throw people in prison for protesting, to apply the law unfairly to help friends and punish enemies, to give and to accept bribes, and so forth. In Weimar Germany, Spartacist were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and even extrajudicially assassinated, while Nazis and stormtroopers committing similar crimes were let off with perhaps a slap on the arm raised in salute. We see the same bias now: BLM or Antifa do what they please, while Proud Boys or the January rioters are thrown in prison on petty grounds.
Those in power again feel free to use that power as they see fit to advance their own interests.
The proliferation of “gay pride” rainbow flags is even eerily similar to the proliferation of swastika flags in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Both represent a political ideology; and the same political ideology, the triumph of the will of the collective, the group, over morality and ontology.
And it inevitably comes to antisemitism. First, because Jews represent symbolically the moral law. They introduced ethical monotheism to the world. Second, because once morality is abolished, Jews provoke the sin of envy. They are too successful, just too good at everything.
Say Biden is Hindenberg, or perhaps Petain. If he is re-elected, some faceless bureaucrat is likely to emerge below him, someone heretofore utterly unobtrusive and unremarkable, as Hitler originally was, or Stalin, or Putin.
If, on the other hand, Trump is elected, is he, perhaps, a Churchill? He is similarly hated by those in power
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 6, 2023
Wherever Two or More of You Are Gathered in My Name
Friend Xerxes wonders why Jesus had only twelve apostles.
The Buddha had ten.
Timothy Leary, at s lecture I attended, claimed that all social changes are accomplished by small groups who all know one another.
One thinks of the Beats: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy, Burroughs, Snider. Or the little group of folksingers in Greenwich Village circa 1960. Or the Inklings. Or the group of friends who, along with me, built the Editors’ Association of Canada.
It must always work this way, because in a larger group, the ways of the world begin to take precedence. The germ of any true vision is not enough to sustain so many when the idea is clearly counter to the larger consensus. For the larger consensus will always be hostile to any such destabilizing insight.
This is why it is important that scripture is almost always misquoted as “wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I with them.”
This misquote implies that Jesus is not with you when alone in prayer, and leaves you when you stand against the group, or your society. Making Oskar Schindler, Nelson Mandela, or Jesus himself, the bad guys.
The actual line, from Matthew, is
“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
If the individual alone is thus excluded, so is the Catholic mass.
The passage refers to this phenomenon, that only a small group can stand against the world. An individual will be crushed; a larger group will be assimilated.
Which, incidentally, is why attendance at mass is not enough. The church is there to administer the sacraments, but everyone needs a prayer group.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
