Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 51

Worming out of a deal with Satan?

An aphorism by Laeth that I linked  few days ago, talked of the possibility that some pre-mortal spirits could make a deal with Satan, before incarnation*.

Thus, some Beings, some humans, might be born with commitment to an evil agenda.

This could be understood as someone born strategically evil.

Such a person would also be prone to "normal" evil, which is selfish short-termism - which is, itself found with widely varying degrees (but perhaps never wholly absent". (I mean - we are all prone to impulses of self-gratification.

This combination of a deal to serve the general, "global" plans of Satan (with hope of some later and desired reward) is in conflict with "doing what I want - Now".

I think this is seen in most people who have a leadership, strategic role in implementing Satan's agenda of evil - they try to worm out of doing their job towards fulfilling the long term deal, and instead will grab what they want, now.

This is one reason why it it a mistake to try and infer a strategy for evil. Even when there is an agenda, it will continually be contradicted and undermined by " petty" and personal corruption.

From a Christian perspective it is important Not to misunderstand such conflict between personal and Satanic evil, between evil strategies and immediate self-gratification.

When the focus is on strategic evil - such as the global totalitarian plans - this is continually being sabotaged by the minions of Satan trying to worm out of their deals - including deals made pre-mortally.

But this is Not a turn towards good.

The totalitarian order may be, probably is, collapsing into infighting among selfish, self-gratifying sub-groups and individuals.

But welshing on a deal with Satan in order to seek immediate corruption, is not virtue.

*It might be asked Why any spirit being would make such a deal? There might be a total incapacity for love; or a feebleness of loving impulse such that the being rejects the core divine principle of creation  (ie. God is love), and therefore joins Satan in opposition to God's creation - on the best terms he can negotiate, given that being's capabilities.

From euthanasia to assisted suicide... Not so much a slippery-slope as jumping off a cliff

I have been observing the suicidal-turn of Western culture for considerably more than a decade. Its beginnings lie back many decades ago, while I was still a medical student. 

At that time, the issue was called euthanasia, and was focused upon people whose suffering was regarded as severe and intractable, and who were incapable of killing themselves - and their Right to have somebody-else kill them. 

More recently, there was a focus on dying "with dignity" - which meant without suffering; so that the debate expanded to include people who could kill themselves - but apparently only in ways that would cause them pain or suffering. The Right being requested was for somebody-else to kill such people pain-lessly, instead of them killing-themselves pain-fully. 

Now, we call it "assisted suicide"; and have reached the point where there is no question of "need", but instead the Right demanded is to be killed pleasantly by somebody-else. With the picture painted of a happy death by drowsing off into permanent sleep while outdoors in some beauty spot - such as a National Park. 

When the question of creating a bureaucratic system for legally allowing some people deliberately to kill other people; there were warnings that this was morally a slippery-slope. 

Well, if we examine the rationale behind such proposals, and the speed with which the Right to be killed has expanded from a handful of people per nation to... everybody; the issue has turned-out to be more like jumping off a cliff from strict-morality and unfortunate necessity, plummeting down into pure amoral (i.e. immoral) convenience and consumer choice. 

The reason for allowing legalized murder has gone from being a last-ditch and desperate remedy for those terminally ill or agonizingly suffering, to a lifestyle preference.    

This is one of those (many) situations in which a top-down strategy meets mass acceptance; because in our Godless materialistic society, the bottom-line for values, for morals, for laws is simply utilitarian human psychology - that is, what people want, what makes people happy, what makes them feel less miserable... 

And this is a matter of inference, unsupportable assertion, and subjective opinion. A situation in which the apparatus of propaganda and ideology has the greatest scope; and where the prevalent sins of this age - fear, cowardice, demotivation, resentment, dishonesty and (most of all) despair - can operate freely and without trammel. 

Unless the trends reverse (and encouraged by deliberately engineered war, civil violence, disease and starvation); we will surely soon be seeing suicide become a publicly explicit and media-favoured lifestyle strategy; with the Western bureaucracies providing whatever necessary facilities. 

In the spiritual war of this world; to have mass suicides of people for such reasons as loss of all hope, fear of the future, refusal to tolerate the possibility of pain, and despair at the present - is a Big Win for the powers of evil. 

Because these would be deaths happening in a state of self-chosen damnation: that is, dying while decisively rejecting the reality of God and the promises of Jesus Christ.

There is, I believe, the maximum possible scope given us for post-mortal repentance (however we die). Death is not the end...

Yet our decisions in mortal life make a permanent difference; and to leave this life in such a spiritual state as (apparently) those who express a desire to be killed pleasantly while contemplating a beautiful view...

Well, this is very far from a fertile seedbed for repentance.   

Analysis by cause and effect acting on categories of things is Not Ultimately True; because relationships between Beings are primary

The analysis by causes and effects, using abstract categories of entities, was developed in the classical and medieval periods when there was still a great deal of spontaneous, unconscious "participation" of human consciousness. 

In other words, when these abstractions cause/ effect/ category were devised; even "things" (such as stars and planets) were regarded - quite naturally, and by experience - as personifications, with the kind of innate nature and desires of a living being. 

But for the modern (especially adult) consciousness, participation has dwindled almost to nothing; and even living beings, even human beings, are regarded primarily as if non-living "things". 

Therefore, to seek understanding of people, the abstractions of category, cause and effects are deployed as if these are the primary and bottom-line realities - more real and important than the relationships between people...

Indeed; relationships between people are themselves subordinated to categorical, cause & effect analysis. 

The mainstream Christian churches have largely apostatized into secular modern consciousness and ideology; and even the most traditionalist of modern church Christians have continued to use the classical and medieval versions of abstract analyses. 

But nowadays, because modern consciousness is so different, these abstractions are not-participated, the abstractions do not return us to the mind-set of the ancients - but instead, the abstractions are alienated and alienating. 

This is why, for instance, Scholastic or Calvinist theologies are so cold and material-mechanical to the modern mind: because we cannot help but take them literally. When they (and older categories and causes) originated, the rigorous philosophy was experienced (quite spontaneously) in what we might regard as a warm, poetic, mystical, animistic way.  

And would-be spiritual explanations for group prayer, ritual, sacredness are often set-out (or, at least, asserted) in a kind of pseudo-scientific fashion: as if constituting a laboratory procedure, or a computer program: If you do this, then this, in such a fashion - then these will be the objective outcomes...

But if, as I believe, the ultimate (metaphysical) reality is that of "Beings in relationships"; then we ought to be trying to understand in these personal and interpersonal terms.

After all, within a good and loving family; the members are Not understood in terms of categories, and their relationships are not conducted as if cause and effect recipes for producing desired results. 

Instead; we realize that we cannot, and should not, treat each other in this mechanistic way; and that our influences on each other are not of a cause and effect nature. 

To read many trad Christians; one would think that getting married, raising a family and living in a family ought to be a matter of slotting members into the proper categories, then following the correct (and God-approved) procedures for implementing the desired changes and outcomes! 

But this is to reduce the family to a bureaucracy; and bureaucracy is intrinsically evil. 

And it matters not whether the bureaucracy purports to be conducted according to laws and regulations of some interpretation of the Bible, Church authority, tradition, theology, or whatnot.

We have all been ingrained with bad habits, actively-evil habits, of depersonalization; of mechanizing humans and other beings - and regarding such mechanizing as not just valid but superior - as (supposedly) validated by our understanding of ancient law and practice.  

Yet such behaviour leads us away from salvation, and by a very direct route; by making salvation impersonal, actually non-personal; reduced to a business of the abstract operations of cause and effect on things. 

Fortunately, it is quick and easy to repent such habits - once we have noticed them, and understood their nature and tendency. 

We all have built-into us - innately, from childhood - the instinct to understand other people and the world by means of relationships between living, purposive, conscious beings. All we require is to know, to be clear about, to decide; is that this is indeed the right and good way of understanding and acting. 

**

The Example of Prayer:

An an instance of the above, we may consider the influence of prayer on other people, as explained by Christians. 

In the medieval past, for instance, the individual conscious was less differentiated from, more immersed in, group consciousness. Therefore a prayer did not come entirely from any individual, and did not express the personal wants of any individual; but was significantly from the group-consciousness, it actually arose from the group. Its effect was because of this - from the group, to the group. 

The medievals may have interpreted prayer in a cause and effect way: I pray for this to happen to him; but in reality, when prayer was effectual it was because prayer operated in an unconscious and implicit group context. 

But the modern person has become detached (almost wholly) from the group-consciousness. This is our freedom and agency, but it also means that our prayers have a different origin. 

Our prayers may come from our selves alone - and without connection with other consciousnesses; and/or derive from second-hand sources, from perceived external stimuli interpreted by learned concepts (such as the political propaganda and the mass media, or from social media).  

Modern people lack a plausible or real basis for the effect of prayers. Mainstream people probably regard prayers as operating on the consciousness of the prayer, with a secondary group-psychological effect, derived from the experience of praying as a group. 

Modern traditionalists regard prayer (and indeed the church) as if it were an engineering project: a matter of particular words in a particular context leading to particular effects - albeit and importantly by the Grace of God, and not from purely human and material causes. 

Yet there is a very considerable quasi-objective "positivism" (materialism, reductionism, scientism) about the way that prayer, ritual, sacraments - even miracles - are understood by modern traditionalists (who have the modern alienated consciousness). 

For Trads; our business as mortal men is to regard Christian realities as objective categories with cause and effect interactions - yet this is, in practice and intrinsically, to reduce humans to things, whatever protestations otherwise.  

What I am suggesting is that we ought not to think of prayer in a cause and effect fashion, operating between our-selves and other people or other things. 

We should instead regard prayer in the context of those entities with whom we ourselves are bound by relationships of love - as we and they were of a family. 

Where there is not this inter-personal (inter-being) love, then there will be no real prayer - with love, all prayer will be significant, will make-a-difference. 

Where there is love, then prayer does not work by cause and effect, but works on the relationships. 

And by this, I means prayer works on the real and ultimate spiritual relationships, relationships that transcend and encompass physical relationships, and potentially extend to post mortal life, and potentially eternally. 

In everyday life, our beneficial relationships are those which are loving, and which regard the other persona as an unique person, our relationship as unique. Actual benefits are seldom planned, and sledom contrived; but consequent on loving relationships. 

And that is how our prayers work also. 

More bits of Laeth - a demonic theme

Another selection from Laeth's aphorism garden: 

if you can make deals with the devil while you're here, you certainly can make them before you come here. a lot can be explained with this insight. 
the illusion of humanity will be destroyed because the devil always overplays his hand 
the first satan wanted to save everyone. the second wanted to damn everyone. the third wants to destroy the very idea of salvation. 
satan has armies, God has heroes
**

Note: These comments on the Devil/ Satan have particular resonance for me. 
I had never considered that pre-mortal souls might incarnate having (covertly) made a "deal with the devil" - but it would explain a lot. 
And why not? After all, even such a deal does not rule-out the possibility of salvation; so it need not be something that God would prohibit - even if God knew or inferred it had happened. 
The comment on Satan's attitudes to salvation is a compression and elucidation of what I understand about the progression of Luciferic/ Ahrimanic/ Sorathic evil; and clarifies that - when it comes to leadership of that party who oppose God and divine creation - there has probably been more than one.   

On reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre

Alec Guinness (illegitimate half-Norman!) as George Smiley in the superb 1974 BBC adaptation of TTSS 

I have just listened to a two-part audio recording of John Le Carre's famous novel of 1974: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; superbly read by Michael Jayston (who played Guillam in the BBC TV adaptation). 

As a novel, it has many excellent aspects; although the ending is disappointingly anti-climatic (the TV adaptation did this better). 

But then, there could hardly be any other kind of ending, given JLC's world-view. 

TTSS confirmed my earlier impressions of the profound human limitations - or, more exactly, deficiencies - of Le Carre himself, and the world he depicted. 

Not one of the TTSS characters is likeable or capable of love; and this applies even to George Smiley where Le Carre seems to have gone all-out to portray goodness in a man. 

A great deal of weight is put upon Smiley's long-term "love" for his promiscuous and cruel wife Anne; but Anne is portrayed as incredibly beautiful, popular, aristocratic and well-connected so the impression is that George is obsessed-with and dependent on her, rather than anything recognizable as genuine love.

All the other characters relationships are based on exploitation, manipulation, illusion, social cachet, and a kind of mindless status-seeking - or some kind of helpless, addictive and obsessive compulsion.  

Le Carre could not portray goodness for the simple and obvious reason that he was not himself good: he could only simulate goodness - but not convincingly.

Despite all these defects, and the claustrophobic - almost suffocating atmosphere - Tinker, Tailor is a very clever and well-structured "whodunnit" that gives the impression of an honest and accurate insight into the nature of life among the alien denizens of the Norman ruling class - what motivates and gratifies them: what makes "Them" tick...   

Think Ahead - Look Back. The spiritual perspective and The Problem of "Pain"

There is a spiritual problem with "pain" - especially if "pain" is understood to refer to the whole gamut of aversive emotions, and all kinds of sufferings. And this problem is that it is not then possible to think about complex matters, or follow a chain of reasoning. Instead the "pain" tends to monopolize attention and overwhelm efforts at other purposive activities - including spiritual. 

This may mean that our usual, and ideal, spiritual practices cannot (or at any rate do not) happen - and we may become habitually focused upon the material - on palliating or escaping the "pain". 

What is needed, in a spiritual sense, must be extremely simple - because otherwise it won't happen. 

A "mantra" is one traditional tactic - an over-and-over-repeated word or short phrase: for Christians, this has often been The Jesus Prayer, or (even shorter) the Name of Jesus. 

But these were devised during the "medieval" era when Man's consciousness was such that (to a significant extent) the word was that which was represented: "the word was the thing". Then; to speak the name of Jesus was itself to become aligned with Jesus. 

For modern Men this may not happen. Instead of the name of Jesus having a positive spiritual effect, it may be that the name of Jesus just loses all meaning and spiritual connotations when too often repeated. 

...It just become automatic, a habit, like humming an "ear worm" tune. 

Here is another possibility, that sometimes works... The aim is to get-out from the materiality of here-and-now, and to restore a spiritual perspective on the current situation. 

The tactic is:

Think Ahead - Look Back 

This simply means to Think Ahead in order to imagine being in resurrected eternal life in Heaven; then to Look Back from imagined salvation onto your present situation. 

If it works, this will - for at least a moment - put your current "pain" into an eternal and Heavenly perspective. 

It des not make the "pain" go away, or even diminish it; but it is a reminder that it cannot go on forever, and will come to an end: a Good end, that is a beginning.

Since Earth is "a school" and the eternal role of mortal life is as a time and place of learning; Looking Back is a proper attitude to enable this learning, during times that would otherwise be wholly negative. 

Think Ahead, Look Back is more difficult and complex than The Jesus Prayer; but if the prayer isn't working, it might be worth a try. 

"What have you got against AI?"

"AI" (Artificial Intelligence) has done a lot of harm by making it seem "necessary" for us to defend not interacting personally with AI entities and AI products! 

We need to notice and think about this. It reveals that an open-ended acceptance of "AI" into human society is already the default. 
We got here step-by-step over many decades, and centuries; and indeed all online communities (such as you, reading this) are already many steps along the way -- but general, consensus, default AI-acceptance brings us all the way. 
We Have Arrived.

What this means is that there is here-and-now a consensus (which may itself be mostly artificial) that it already is (and indeed should be) fine and normal for individual human beings to interact (inevitably personally) indiscriminately with some unknown and unknowable mixture of other-humans and AI entities and products. 
The key concept is "interact". 

From my perspective; this implicitly amounts to a denial of the ultimate reality and existential significance of this mortal life. 
Which is, of course, a great victory for the powers of purposive evil. 
And such a situation is not some future possible dystopian bogeyman state that may happen "if we are not careful" - for many, many people this is how things already are. 

For some of these people (and I suspect this has always been the case), I think there never has been any genuine inner distinction between interacting with other real beings, and with simulated-Beings (with projections, for instance) - because such people are ultimately solipsistic: they only really "believe in" themselves. 
But there seem to be more and more such people; because they are numerous and strong enough to demand that anyone who does not want to become one of them, must justify "why not".
When you are in a situation of trying to convince others "why not?" go along with their plans for you - you have already and decisively lost the rhetorical war; the battle of Public Relations. 

...At which point you either give-up and join the downslide to damnation; or else effectively fight-back: maybe materially, certainly spiritually.
  

Ultimate Outsiders - willingly so

In the sixty years since Colin Wilson published The Outsider - describing the state of sociological, psychological and spiritual alienation characteristic of the past couple of centuries - the situation has changed.

In 1956 it was possible to regard the Outsider as being rescued from his predicament by external change - but now he can only rescue himself. 
The current Outsider has only one place to look for help: within himself.


Thus - in politics and sociology there are no utopias, and all large institutions are thoroughly corrupted including the main churches. The intellectual elites are dishonest and incompetent. Science in 1956 was overwhelmingly successful - but has become a careerist bureaucracy. The universities seemed like a haven of privilege and leisure; but they are now the habitus of petty officials, dishonest spinners and box tickers.

We have no leaders - only middle managers and psychopaths - therefore, we must rely on ourselves. 
There is nobody else to turn-to. We must find what we need in our-selves - because it will not be supplied by any person or institution.


We, here and now, are the ultimate Outsiders because we have nowhere to turn - indeed, there are very few other people even to talk with about such matters. We are fortunate indeed if we have a marriage and family to sustain us - because these too have been destroyed over the past 60 years.

We we cannot trust anybody, we must trust ourselves. We are forced either to seek oblivion in distraction and intoxication or suicide - to escape alienation by escaping consciousness; or else to look within. 

But looking within is the answer! It always was - if only the Outsider allows himself to acknowledge the reality of God!


When we look within, and begin to dismantle the false selves and automatic thinking, we find God.

The old Outsiders such as Nietzsche regarded the God-within (the Self) as an alternative to God; but we know that the God within is God. 
Since we are God's children we ourselves are divine (Christians know this - or should), which means we have 'inherited' divinity. God is within us as well as without - the external God is denied us but God within is undeniable.


We can, should and will find Christianity within us - we can find Christianity despite being denied true and valid scriptures, tradition, legitimate religious teaching, rituals... we can find Christianity within us with total confidence because we know our loving God who created and sustains reality would not leave us unprovided for.

If within is the only place left to us; then within will suffice - we will find there everything we need.

We will find faith, courage, and motivation; we will find love.


We are in a situation where - if we honestly seek to answer the condition of alienation, nihilism and despair - there is no alternative to doing what we should anyway be doing: looking within - to find not only our true selves, but God and all the necessities that only God can provide.

We have the possibility of a degree of spiritual agency, freedom and autonomy seldom seen in the history of the world. And everything is channelling us towards exactly that.


We are fated to be the Ultimate Outsiders - like it or not. 
But we can solve the problem of alienation by willingly becoming the Ultimate Outsiders... By embracing, rather than avoiding, reality - we can become free, true and live from our divinity (albeit partially, with frequent errors and sins - but that is enough).

We cannot be made to make the right choice - we might instead continue to choose oblivion and the destruction of consciousness... drugs, social media, transgressive sex - even the destruction of our own persons by transhumanist technologies.

However, that choice is becoming clearer and clearer, more and more conscious - to the point of being unavoidable.

Yes indeed, things have 'come to a point'...


Note: The crux of my point is that God (as Christians understand God: creator, loving, and a personal God - concerned by every individual) would not leave anybody, at any time or in any place, bereft of spiritual necessities. The world, as we actually experience it, from our own point of view, is adequate. Indeed, since life is not a random accident; in some vital sense you and I personally (and everybody else) have been placed into mortal life in a time and at a place at-least-adequately suited to our individual needs for experiencing and learning.
Edited from a post of 18/7/17 - H/T Laeth for the reminder.   

CS Lewis on immortality - a misleading example and bad advice

Like many people in the past decades, I owe a significant debt to CS Lewis as an agent of my conversion to Christianity. Lewis is more than a beloved and much pondered writer for me - he is more like a friend. 
Nonetheless; beyond the basic fact of that conversion (which is, after all, the main thing), I also absorbed from CSL several elements of what I now regard as serious error, especially in terms of the ultimate question of "what Christianity is". 
Even before I became a Christian, and for a good while afterwards (many months, and indeed residually for some years) I would have subscribed to this statement by CS Lewis's in Surprised by Joy. The bolded sections I have added for emphasis: 

My conversion involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now number it among my greatest mercies that I was permitted for several months, perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising that question [i.e. the question of whether - and how - there was a connection between God and Joy]. 
My training was like that of the Jews, to whom He revealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better (or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol. And I did not dream even of that. 
There are men, far better men than I, who have made immortality almost the central doctrine of their religion; but for my own part I have never seen how a preoccupation with that subject at the outset could fail to corrupt the whole thing. 
I had been brought up to believe that goodness was goodness only if it were disinterested, and that any hope of reward or fear of punishment contaminated the will. If I was wrong in this (the question is really much more complicated than I then perceived) my error was most tenderly allowed for. I was afraid that threats or promises would demoralise me; no threats or promises were made. The commands were inexorable, but they were backed by no "sanctions". 
God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. Long since, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of the Absolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself. That is why, though it was a terror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because of what He is in Himself. 
If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, "I am." To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him. In His nature His sovereignty de jure is revealed.
**
Lewis explains that it was a good thing for him - implicitly in a psychological sense:
1. That he was unconcerned by the question of immortality: of life beyond mortal life.
2. That he regarded his faith essentially as obedience; and obedience to a God to whom obedience was due impersonally - because he was God - (which I take to mean, the creator of everything from nothing, omnipotent, omniscient etc.)  - and without consideration of any personal values. 
And it seems clear, and Lewis himself confirms, that this attitude to God is closely analogous to that of Judaism - and, he might have added, to Islam.   

Lewis even goes so far as to say that it is corrupting to religion for "personal immortality" to be the central doctrine. 
Unfortunately (as it now seem to me) I imbibed this personal prejudice of Lewis's along with my conversion. Consequently, I found that reading the Fourth Gospel was extremely confusing - since it seemed obvious that "immortality" (of a particular kind - resurrected) was the focus of Jesus's teaching. 
(There are also accounts, which impress me, that suggest immortality was a primary means of conversion.) 

I am forced to conclude that Lewis's personal history and psychology led him into a very serious misunderstanding of Christianity - but I would add that it is not at all uncommon and I had exactly the same misconception. 
And for much the same reason - in that I became a Christian via monotheism. That is, through intermediate stages of recognizing that we inhabited "a creation", and recognizing the reality of transcendental values (truth, beauty, virtue, cohesion)...
In other words, again much like Lewis, I regarded the history of Christianity as essentially cumulative, and the nature of Christianity as added-on to pre-existent Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology. 

I now regard this as deeply wrong, in its essentially reality. Of course Jesus lived at a point in time, in which there were pre-existent cultural and religious realities. 
But I now see Jesus as offering something fundamentally simple (eternal, Heavenly, resurrected life), and qualitatively new - a second creation. 
I see the intellectual structures of pre-existent Hebrew monotheism and Greek philosophy as not just irrelevant but distorting to the real nature of the religion of Jesus Christ. 

In particular; it seems like bad advice to suggest that people ought not to be concerned with the question of immortality; and that we ought not to try and understand the relationship between their own values and the nature of God. Such ideas point away-from (not towards) Christianity as it ought to be understood - the teaching of Jesus Christ revealed in the Fourth Gospel; and (much more importantly) an understanding which is simple and clear enough to be knowable by direct personal revelation.   

Famously sloping sports fields

The top picture is Lord's cricket ground in St John's Wood, north London  - also known as HQ, or the Home of Cricket. 

The lower picture is Backwell Primary School's football pitch (you can see the dark coloured goal posts). 

Perhaps the Lord's slope is somewhat more famous, and less extreme, than Backwell's - but the latter was more familiar to me - being where I attended school throughout childhood. 

Backwell's strange conditions (a football placed on the grass would actually roll downhill if left unattended) provided us with much-needed home advantage due to familiarity, while playing other local schools. Few members of the opposition would be able to get over the shock and dismay at the sight of our pitch, before the game had been taken away from them.  

Lord's, by contrast, seems to work to favour visiting countries and work against England; perhaps due to the excitement of playing in such a storied venue - plus the fact that the Lord's crowd are traditionalists who (sportingly) applaud and celebrate the opposition's successes, as vigorously (or more so) than those of the home team.