Francis Berger's Blog, page 50

Being a Christian Today Means Having Faith in the Faith Jesus Has in Us

Slightly edited from a response to a thought-provoking comment JM Smith left on this post.

Well-meaning Christians are quick to point out that Romantic Christianity sets the bar too high for most people to follow.

Whenever I hear something along those lines, I am immediately reminded of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor who accuses Jesus of overestimating human nature and setting the bar too high for most people to follow. The Grand Inquisitor spends the bulk of the story explaining why and how he and his church have set about "correcting" Jesus's "mistake".

What was Christ's mistake? ". . . a kind of promise of freedom which they in their simplicity and inborn turpitude are unable even to comprehend, which they go in fear and awe of—for nothing has ever been more unendurable to man and human society than freedom!"

The Grand Inquisitor then goes on to accuse Christ of cruelty for expecting so much of people. Why didn't He simply give into the temptations in the desert and provide the people what they really wanted?

Mystery. Miracle. Authority.

Had Christ provided that, He would have unburdened people of their freedom, and they would have followed Him slavishly without question because -- as the Grand Inquisitor points out -- nothing is more unbearable for man than freedom.

But Christ did not give into the temptations. He refused to relieve people of their "burden" of freedom. On the contrary, He sought to increase freedom. And this, according to the Grand Inquisitor, reveals Christ's cruelty in setting the bar too high.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. If the bar for Romantic Christianity is too high, then it is too high in the same sense that Jesus's offer of freedom is "too high" in the Grand Inquisitor story.

At its core, The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor is about faith. It reveals the undeniable fact that Jesus has immense faith in us. The Grand Inquisitor considers this to be a mistake on Jesus's part.

I don't.

I believe Jesus's faith in us reveals a foundation upon which we can co-create something truly divine.

The Grand Inquisitor story reveals that Jesus had faith in us. Sadly, it also reveals our lack of faith in ourselves and others. More significantly, it reveals our lack of faith in Jesus.  More precisely, our lack of faith in His faith in us.

Christians have a choice before them. Do they start finally living up to Christ's faith in them  or do they continue to regard Christ's faith in them to be a mistake that needs perpetual correcting a lá some Grand Inquisitor or other?

Simply put - it is spiritually impossible for Christians to have faith in Jesus if they reject the faith Jesus has in them.

It is spiritually impossible for Christians to have faith in Jesus if they believe that He set the bar too high. 

For me, a big part of Romantic Christianity involves having faith in Jesus's faith in us. It involves recognizing that the bar He set is not "too high."   

The Wounded Angel

The Wounded Angel - Hugo Simberg - 1903

Reverting to Christendom Consciousness Works Against God

A slightly edited response to Anti-Gnostic's comments on this post:

I believe Imperium Christianity or Christendom or centralized organized Christianity served a valuable and necessary purpose, but it also served a particular form of human consciousness, which I will refer to here as heteronomy - the spiritual and material condition of strong traditional norms and values supported by stern and rigid external demands upon the individual, freedom, and self-determination.

Within this framework, loyalty and obedience are the highest virtues, while freedom is a lesser virtue that is quickly sacrificed for tradition, God, or the greater good. This form of consciousness slowly began to fade in the West around the time of the Renaissance and has been fading ever since.

I interpret this to mean that God desires that we abandon this form of consciousness and move toward greater freedom, personality, subjectivity and creativity. Moreover, I believe he desires for us to begin understanding Him on these terms.

People in the West have been moving in this direction for centuries, but it has been mostly a movement of "free from" God rather than "free for" God.

​Without God, the shift toward greater freedom, personality, and creativity has collapsed back into a form of godless heteronomy, complete with its own inverted value system and external rigid demands.

Nevertheless, exchanging our current demonic, anti-Christian totalitarianism for a return to some form of Christian totalitarianism would do more spiritual and, potentially, worldly harm than good.

I don't believe God's ultimate plan for humanity is to revert to some kind of universalized worship of Him under the yolk of heteronomy complete with all of its rigid external forms and demands.

I believe God's ultimate plan for humanity involves humans becoming divinized co-creators with God, but the success of this plan is not up to God alone -- man has a say in it as well.

In this sense, I think Romantic Christianity has far more to offer man in this time and place than any revived Christendom ever could.

Periphery or Center?

Christians lament being pushed to the periphery of society. They complain about being marginalized. They fear they may soon be singled out. Perhaps even hunted down.
 
Christians long to return to a time when they occupied the center of society. When they were the ones doing the marginalizing, the singling out, and the hunting down. 

At the very least, Christians yearn for security. If nothing else, they dream of establishing safe spaces where Christians can be Christians without the threat of being marginalized, singled out, or hunted down. 

Christians today loathe peripheries. They do not feel secure on the circumference. They long to reoccupy their place at the center because they believe that is the only way the they can be safe and the only way the world can be saved. 

Christians today should forget about being safe. And they should certainly forget about saving the world.

Jesus didn’t pray for the world. Why do you? 

Christians should also consider that the spiritual center is no longer synonymous with the social center. On the contrary, the spiritual center now begins on the social circumference and extends beyond the peripheries of ideal objectivity into real subjectivity. 

Christians should also consider that Christ Himself was always on the social periphery despite being THE spiritual center.

Still, Christians insist they can only be Christians when they are safe, and being safe means being in the center of society.
​ 
In reality, Christians today are only safe when they are free. A Christian who is free knows he is at the center of the spiritual world. As such, he cannot be pushed to the periphery of anything.

With Franz Liszt on Lead Vocals

Henri Lehmann (1814-1882) - Portrait of Franz Liszt - 1839 I am generally not a big fan of the music video genre, but every once in a while I come across video that makes me smile for all the right reasons.

Case in point -- the video for Alpha Zulu by the French pop band, Pheonix. Featuring a gallery's worth of famous artworks come to life making faces and bobbing their heads to the music, Alpha Zulu's "piece de resistance" has to be Henri Lehmann's Portrait of Franz Liszt singing the song's first stanza.  The choice to feature Liszt singing the opening lines of Alpha Zulu is no accident but a continuation of Phoenix's appreciation of the master, who was born in the town of Raiding, a mere 40 kilometers from the village I know call home. The video below features the band visiting Liszt's home -- now a museum -- in Bayreuth, Germany. 

Weather: Under It, Quite Severely

Spring has exploded here in western Hungary. Clear skies. Pleasant temperatures.

Unfortunately, my immune system has responded to this development by exploding in a different, less pleasant way.

The old adage of being "under the weather" doesn't even begin to describe the overall state of ill health I have experienced in the past few days. 

Aw, well. Nothing a little time won't cure. 

I hope to be back blogging soon . . .  perhaps in a few days' time.    

Christ Without Christendom

I have never lived in Christendom, and to the best of my knowledge, no Christian alive today has. To claim that such-and-such country in the West was -- until very recently -- a part of Christendom or even a Christian country is delusional.

Sure, Christianity continued to influence some aspects of culture and society in some Western countries until about the Second World War -- maybe even up to about the 1960s in some places -- but it would be a stretch to refer to the influence of this sum of "somes" as Christendom or as characteristics of a so-called Christian country. 

Christendom is behind us -- far behind us. Same goes for Christian nations. Furthermore, I doubt that I will ever live in a Christian nation or in any kind of Christendom in my lifetime. My son's lifetime? Who knows? Maybe -- but probably not. Same goes for his kids. 

Bleak outlook? Well, it depends on one's perspective. If Christianity depends on things like Christian nations and Christendom, then the outlook is bleak indeed.

However, if one can separate Christ from nations and a grouping of nations, then the outlook brightens considerably. 

There is no Christendom. There are no Christian nations. There is only Christ. 

And if you stop and think about it -- really think about it -- you might begin to see this as a blessing, not a curse.

Life in the Garden of Death

The Garden of Death - Hugo Simberg - 1896 My vegetable garden began as a hobby – a way to spend some constructive time outdoors in the spring, summer, and autumn. Household finances were not a primary motivator. I simply enjoyed the process of planting, nurturing, and growing a little extra food. The superior taste of the produce from my garden was reward enough for me.

Well, what began as a hobby is now somewhat of a necessity in this part of the world. The official food price inflation is above 40% at the moment, but the actual “real” food inflation is 100% and higher . . . in some cases, much higher.

My family can still afford to buy food at grocery stores, but at such ridiculously elevated prices, it is worth looking for cheaper options wherever they may be found. That’s where the necessity part comes in. Although I don’t really need to grow any of my own food, I would foolish not to.

I am not a prepper. Nor am I a bunker-building survivalist hell-bent on surviving some much-vaunted zombie apocalypse. I’m just a common man attempting to lessen the impoverishing effects of inflation . . . ahem, cough, cough . . . price gouging.

I can’t fully escape the pressure the demons are applying via their economic, financial, trade, and supply chain tactics, but I can still do little things to ease the pressure here and there. Growing my own vegetables happens to be one of them. 

And these little things are nothing to sneeze at. For example, the dozen egg-laying hens I purchased last spring have saved my family between 700 to 800 dollars over the course of the year. To put that into perspective, that’s an average month’s salary after taxes in Hungary. The hens have been such a great success that I am already working to obtain at least a dozen more this spring. I may also begin raising quail. Perhaps some ducks, as well.

None of these things will make me self-sufficient or liberate me from the System. Nor will they fully protect my family from larger potential dangers or ramped-up demonic pressures. Yet they do offer some reprieve.

More importantly, they offer glimpses into reality’s independence of Ahriman. Those glimpses alone are worth the extra effort of digging and hoeing.

Revelations of life in a garden of death.  

Grain of Salt? More Like Boulders . . .

One of the most depressing aspects of the past three years has been the sudden and unwanted revelation that most of the people I have looked to for insights, discernment, interpretations, observations, cognizance, clarification, and ideas have been dead wrong about nearly everything that has transpired in the past three years.

I'm talking about incredibly intelligent, well-read people here. 

By dead wrong, I don't mean inaccurate predictions or garbled analysis. That's par for the course and is to be expected.

​After all, being wrong is a part of being human. I've been wrong about many things and will continue to be wrong about many more things. No, by dead wrong I mean wrong in the most fundamental way -- at the level of metaphysical assumptions -- at the core concept level of being, existence, and reality.

Experiencing intelligent, well-read people being consistently and predictably wrong at this level -- the level of first principles -- has been difficult to ignore and increasingly challenging to excuse.

It wouldn't be nearly so bad if the dead wrongers admitted that they should at least consider honestly re-evaluating their assumptions, but very few appear willing or able to do so.

As far as I can tell, they've made their commitments, and they're sticking to them. Fine and well, but I hope they understand that everything they continue to say about theology, spirituality, morality, ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, logic, cosmology, and all the rest of it now requires a boulder of salt.

​A mere grain is insufficient to cover dead wrong.      

The Thing About Fast Food Kitchens

Having a chef for a father means I grew up with a solid understanding of what the term "good food" means.

Nevertheless, I had a certain weakness for fast food throughout my childhood and adolescence and enjoyed eating in places like McDonalds, Taco Bell, or what have you.

Thankfully, my youthful affection for Big Macs and Whoppers began to fade by my late-teens. When I hit my mid-twenties, I stopped eating fast food altogether.

The reasons?

​Well, there were the obvious health and nutritional considerations and the general quality of customers who frequent such establishments, but what really turned me off fast food were the kitchens.

Have you ever really stopped to consider what fast food kitchens look like?

Below is an image of a typical (higher end) fast food kitchen:   And this is what a typical post-mortem examination room looks like. You know, the place where they perform autopsies.   Because I worked in many restaurants in my youth, I get that virtually all kitchens in contemporary restaurants -- fast food or otherwise -- look like autopsy rooms, primarily because stainless steel is durable, corrosive-resistant, relatively hygienic, and easy-to-clean.

Regardless, the whole thing turns me off. Always has -- which helps explain why I don't go out to each much anymore.