The Climb

The western slopes of the Bitterroot mountains grow with each step toward my ridge. What began as an evening hunt for morel mushrooms blossomed into a 3,000-foot climb toward an unknown destination with unknown aesthetic pleasures. Formerly, I wielded trail slogans to drag myself over each steep portion of a trail. I might have said, “Don’t worry, this trail was built by people for people. Eventually, it will flatten.” I now know there is a more precise route to the top of each towering ridgeline or mountain that a trail would not dare travel. A trail for each of us to blaze.
            I am often lazy. If not physically, certainly mentally and spiritually. I, like all people, perceive potential threats to my fragile sense of self and truth, then pack them away in a deep, dark corner of my mind. “A problem for a future occasion.” Of course, just because they are packed away does not mean there is no need to address them. In this moment, as the sun begins to set, my water is back at camp a couple thousand feet down the mountain, dinner is waiting to be eaten, and my logic tells me to turn around. It is getting dark and I have been awake since four in the morning. I am hungry, a little dehydrated and probably not thinking clearly. However, something else is factoring into the equation. Something deeper, stronger, freer, more profound. It is that thing that tells you to go for what you want, even though there is a cost. That thing that tells you what is safe is not always what is best. That thing that begs you to venture into the unknown with no safety net, no vision, no destination.
            Somehow, that thing wins this day. It doesn’t win all days. How could it? If it did, we might never work in an office, clean our bedrooms, wash the dishes, or go to class. The routines of our lives, however monotonous, prove ourselves intent on establishing order within our lives. But as order grows, it competes with that little voice of chaos begging us to say, “Fuck it, I’m going a different way.” That voice that tells us even though we can’t see it from the river bottom, there might be something better on the other side of that ridge. That voice, that thing, the human spirit.
            It can be hard at times to force ourselves up and out. It can feel like our future is bound to the sins of our past. At times, it might even seem like there is no future. A pandemic sweeps our little planet and sends it into political chaos; the lingering blisters of racism in a nation open and re-open, threatening to never heal. Our jobs, friendships, love interests, don’t quite turn out the way we had imagined in our mind. Does this mean we stop imagining? Does this mean we settle for the same thing over and over, like dogs waiting to be fed cheap dogfood? Sometimes, the only answer might be to starve in the interest of getting something better. Something you deserve in life. There is no salvation to be found within the pits of complacency. Your value is not tied to what’s happening around you, it’s tied to what you do about it. So, what are you doing about it?
            I reach a false summit. A massive elk antler catches my eye in the middle of a meadow. I use the direction of the wind to sneak behind a beaded group of bull elk in velvet. The spring snow crunches beneath my feet. My legs shake like jelly in a jar as I posthole forward, thoughts of turning back now buried beneath the scree miles behind where I now stand. Another false summit, but I welcome it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m not prepared to reach my goal, whatever that is. But eventually I do. I reach the summit. Behind me, the emotionless stares of the surrounding peaks and valleys. Below me, the river bottom from which I came. Ahead, mountains as far as the eye can see.
            The summit of a high ridge or mountain top, to me, never fails to serve as a concrete reminder of our physical dependence on overcoming our own helplessness. We are, in the end, either defined by our limitations or our determination to conquer our limitations, test our boundaries, and evolve. Our grasp on our own independence and freedom causally relates to our ambition to achieve what we deserve. It is not given to us. Our value is not tied to the results or even the opportunities, but our willingness to pursue and create results and opportunities. I believe in a potential for greatness. I believe in a future, better than my imagination can conjure. I believe the path less followed is often harder. It requires us to look at ourselves critically. It challenges us to question the routines and truths we cling to for a false sense of safety and comfort. We cannot guarantee when we get to the top there won’t be more mountains to climb. What we can almost certainly count on, however, is that the climb will yield a result that lights a fire inside us we never knew possible. A fire that burns away the old and useless and leaves new growth to take its place.

Honor Among Thieves

Dale is a large man. He stands over six feet tall, his hair is long, and his eyes squint toward you as if he hadn’t time for pleasantries. It is nearing 12 o’clock and his girlfriend still sleeps beneath a pile of blankets underneath a Tacoma November sky. Should it rain, their home, a highway underpass near Pacific Ave, should shield them from the onslaught of Western Washington’s late autumn moisture. Like rain in Seattle, the homeless in Western Washington are a mainstay. Dale, who has weathered harassment from police, violence from other homeless people, no money, and dependence on drugs, is no exception. He tells us tales of murder, drugs, and theft. He expresses his hatred for the United States government and its corruption, all of which is hard to disagree with. All Dale sees in himself and the world is evil. Is he wrong?

As Dale walks away to roll himself a cigarette, it is hard not to examine his rather large collection of clothing, dishware, and miscellaneous belongings, many of which he watches for other homeless folks for a small price. Dale has enough to his name that he could fill a small house should he find the motivation to turn his life around. When I ask if he needs any food, clothing, or toiletries, he says he has all he needs. When I ask what’s next for him however, he simply answers, “You’re looking at it.” As Dale’s toothless drug dealer pulls up in a beaten down car, the answer to my question is clear.

You get the sense that these people not only operate with disregard to societal law, but moral law as well. You have the feeling as though they have sinned so habitually that they have no regard for wrong or right at all, and the code to which they honor is dictated only by the means required to achieve their next high. It is easy to say, “It’s their choice to be where they are,” mostly because if you say that you’d nearly always be right. And if you’d ask Dale, he would probably agree.

After listening to Dale confess his troubles and his hopeless aspirations, essentially to bide his time until death, I offer to pray over him. His reply, “better not—pray for me, but not with me. I’m too far gone.”

In contrast, a large man, also named Dale, drives his early seventies Chevelle into a gym parking lot 120 miles to the North of this underpass. This Dale, by his admission, owns a large house. He gloats about his four vehicles: a Harley, a Ford F-350 lifted, a 2016 Mustang, and of course, his navy-blue pristine Chevelle. A couple months prior, Dale slept with his friend’s girlfriend, who moved in with him, which he later left for another mistress. He spends much of his time at the gym watching himself with awe in the mirror, as his recently injected testosterone pumps through his uselessly muscular frame. He is his own God.

While the two Dales seem to be equally as guilty in their own way, a third person comes to mind. Kate, a personal trainer. She is charismatic, engaged in people’s lives, beautiful, married to her college sweetheart, and has a young son not quite a year old. Kate is ambitious, with aim to grow her travel business, help her husband grow his real-estate business, and grow a training division at the gym in her spare time. She tells me about her ambitious intent, prays that God bless her finances and businesses, and prays continually for God to “lead her to prosperity.”

It is easy to get on my knees before I go to bed, close my fingers together, bow my head, and pray for the needy. It is easy to create a hierarchy of sinners, placing the generic “good person” at or near the bottom and placing people my culture deems as “wicked” toward the top. If I wanted to pray for the innocent and needy person, which of these three would qualify? The man believes God has forgotten him, the man who believes he is God, or the woman who believes God is her financial advisor? What if I throw myself into the equation? Where do I fit in the hierarchy of “good people?”

Honor among thieves. It is the scenario where the gang member and murderer sentenced to life in prison brutally assaults the accused child molester. It is the moment the wicked man disassociates himself with the wicked-er man. A more ground-level understanding of honor among thieves might be a Hollywood adult-film star accusing a reality TV star/business-man turned president of the United States of paying her to keep silent about their affair. Maybe it is a husband yelling at a wife for nagging because he didn’t take out the trash during the football game. Honor among thieves—there is not such a thing. Only hypocrites telling hypocrites they are hypocrites.

When a man tells me he isn’t worthy of God’s grace because, as he puts it, “all the shit I’ve done,” I can only agree with him. The truth is—he isn’t. We all like to say, regarding our own faults, “Well, no one is perfect,” but how imperfect do we have to become to consider ourselves “a bad person?” When Dale tells me this on this cold morning beneath the underpass, I find myself humbled. Not because of my gratitude at my good fortune in life, but because while I have a car, a job, a home, and a career—I have more in common with Dale than not; I also am not worthy of God’s grace. Not I, not the Dale’s, not Kate, not anyone. We are neither good people nor bad people—we are just people—constantly under threat of corruption, and often succumbing.

We are all subject to sin. Whether it be too much coffee, too much fast-food, too much TV, too much pornography, too much sex, too much to drink, too many drugs—we are all just searching for a means to achieve our next high. Some of us stumble in silence, some of us stumble noisily. In between moments of righteousness are moments of wickedness, and visa-versa. What has been sold as a moral yin-yang is truly a poor justification for being constantly overcome by our inadequacies. However, we cannot justify our inadequacies. By ourselves, are sins are like rain in Western Washington, they are a mainstay. No one deserves Gods justification, he gives it at a cost. But not to anyone, only those humble enough to know they need it. Only those willing to pursue a relationship with him. It is not our job to give it nor make judgement on who needs it. It is simply our job to retrieve it and let others know it can be had.     

 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

  

  

Transcendental Law- The Amorality of Natural Law

What do I know?

Minutes ago, the sun was glaring at me through the lens of a blue sky, but I watched the clouds roll over the top of the surrounding peaks and avalanche down the empty slopes toward me. I shuffled my feet and staggered toward the nearest tree cover, just as the wind began to throw hail into my eyes. I sat behind the tree, patiently awaiting the passing storm. After only five minutes or so, the ground was covered with a quarter-inch layer of what looks like nickel sized clumps of sea-salt. As the rays of sun reach around the trees base, these clumps of hail melted into the late Spring soil, promising lush vegetation for the coming months.

Now, however, I lower my baseball cap over my eyes and lay my head against the pillowtop stone surface, with my feet sloping down the mountainside and the breeze sifting through the meadow. My binoculars hang by their string from my wrist and follow gravity toward the bottom of the valley, but the pull of the long day summons my eyelids to their closing, and a calm dream replaces the world I live in with the world that lives in me.

As I wake, I clumsily trek back down the mountain, momentarily losing my way and stumbling into a rocky creek bed. “Wake up and watch your step,” I mutter to myself. My voice is the only audible human voice I have heard over the course of the last three days, and I’m beginning to cherish my input.

I am tired, so I sleep. I am hungry, so I eat. I am thirsty, so I drink. But if there is work to be done, I cannot sleep. If there is no more food, I cannot eat. If there is no stream, I cannot drink. Sometimes this world avails me with what I need to be comfortable, sometimes it does not. What it never fails in, however, is honesty. As the eagle does not lament the passing of the gopher, nor does a flame the burning of a cedar tree, nor does the heat mourn the shriveling grass in late August, nor shall this world be burdened by the passing of my final breath. It giveth as it taketh away. The good does not hide the bad, instead the good coexists with the bad.

I do not know how the sun came to be, nor the eagle, nor the flame. Was it chance? Maybe. I hope that is not the case, nor will I live as though it is. For I know that the sun questions not its shine, the eagle likely questions not its flight, and the flame questions not its burning. No, these things only are. They are as they are. Therefore, no time shall I waste amongst them confused as to my place within their existence. I just am as well—I find no virtue in claiming to be as I am not. I find no virtue in self-invention, self-discovery, but only self-fulfillment.

            What burden we carry! The burden of self-realization, the burden of self-pity, the burden of self-hatred, the burden of self-love. It could be said that all seasons of the earth can be found within the self. What burden is the self! Do the trees of the earth refuse to sway with the winters wind? Do the birds of the sky refuse to hunt for the sake of fast? Do the trees wither and die for fear of the future? Does the tide rest after a long, hard day? Does it refuse the order of the moon?

            It is not that I cannot exist in this place, instead it is that I have found myself with a choice to either succumb to Nature’s Law or Man’s Law, assuming that, because they are known, they are all that can be true. But if Nature’s Law is that which exists without man, then Natural Law requires not that I perceive it or perceive at all. It does not lie to me when it strikes me with beauty or slays me with brutality. If it holds nothing back from my perception of it and requires not my perception of it to still act truthfully, then I can learn to apply the principal of perception to Man’s Law as well. In this case, the Law of Man, with war, theft, sexual deviance, and even deceit, evidences its intent with alarming transparency. It has the capacity to be as beautiful or as ruthless as Nature’s Law, which tells me I may have created a false distinction between the two forms of Law. Thus, Man’s Law acts homogeneously with Nature’s Law. Evidently, they are one and the same.

            To this I propose, that while humanity may not willingly admit to the truth of Nature’s Law as it applies to man, it is observably true that mankind is bound to the Laws of Nature. While evidence shows this to be true, humankind tells a lie: some humans are good, some are bad. But to be a human is neither righteous nor unrighteous if the only laws to which we are bound are the Laws of Nature. No more are we good or evil than the lion who kills the cubs of another pride. If, by the Laws of Nature, we conduct ourselves, our recognizing of a potential to overcome the constraints of Natural Law with the attainment of righteousness means either that we recognize another law which governs goodness and badness, or we lie that goodness and badness truly exist.

            What is a world without good and evil? Of course, it is a world without evil, but it then must also be a world without good; for one cannot exist without the other. Therefore, concepts of good and evil within human societies transcend Natural Law, despite our proclivity to reflect Natural Laws in our communal and individual actions. The best evidence that our ponderings of ethics are an anomaly is that we ponder ethics. The moment that we question whether what we do is right or wrong is the very moment we should question whether our place in the universe is by chance, or if we are in fact governed by another, transcendental law, which  the law's of man and nature cannot achieve. 

The great burden of the open and thoughtful atheist or agnostic is an inability to transcend moral relativity (morality governed by culture and circumstance) and establish a credible basis for any moral standard. You can live a primarily moral life as a proclaimed atheist just as well as you can live a predominantly immoral life while staking claim in a religion. Still, there is no philosophically sound argument for an objective morality outside of religion for the following reasons:
        1) For right and wrong to exist there must be a governing authority to establish its boundaries outside of subjective interpretation. Even the most rational of human's are subject to biases and moral blind-spots. There must be an established Law, or else no on can be rewarded or punished for their actions with consistency.
        2) Natural Law is amoral. Competing acts of nature (a forest fire, the death of vegetation in autumn, beaver dams...) are in constant conflict with one-another. As expressed above, this law is the only observable governing law. Even the most progressive moral societies are bound to the Laws of Nature. But Nature's Law does not require we are monogamous, we treat other's with respect, or we accept deviations from that which is socially abnormal. If we concede to Nature's Law, we concede to amorality.
        3) Every principal you carry with you in your life is either dictated by nature, culture, or religion. If you abandon your religion, you act either by culture or nature. As expressed above, cultures, without an objective law, act by nature. Therefore, without an objective moral truth, you are bound to act only by nature.
        These points are secularly acknowledged, but are unanswerable. You can claim moral principals are defined by an enlightened society, as many materialist intellectuals do, but this does not account for the philosophical inconsistencies mentioned above; it only disregards them. What enlightenment philosophers feared with the death of God was the death of moral objectivity. For moral objectivity to continue to exist, it must be credible foundationally for the sake of future generations. The present state of humanity is at its most desirable currently, but the moral truths at stake have never been so endangered. With further development of nuclear arms, artificial intelligence, genetic modification, virtual reality, and data infringement, the stakes are at their highest.
You can also claim that you have no interest in whether you are righteous or not, you just do the best you can. This will work for you in your lifetime, but consider this: those of us who have thought most deeply on issues of right and wrong and expressed our respective beliefs publicly and genealogically (through our families and children) are the ones who will have a say in the moral truths of the future. Simply not caring about moral truth, if there is any, is a shallow understanding of your place and responsibility as an individual within societies; especially democratic republics such as ours. It is always worth it, in my opinion, to consider what you believe, how you got there, and how you can best impact future generations positively. In my opinion, there is no excuse for moral complacency.
But, what do I know?

The Greatest Purpose Principal

I’ve previously proposed that there is no need to spend energy wandering through space and time with intentions of self-discovery. Self-discovery is, in my estimation, an aimless pursuit. The “self,” if there is such a thing, lies somewhere between our clothes, haircuts, tattoos, and the environment we are surrounded by. If our ideas of ourselves are almost entirely constructed, but there is, at least I hope, a deeply rooted “self” to be fortified (not discovered), then where is the beloved journey of self-discovery and purposeful pursuit?

            First, we must differentiate between determinism and purpose. While there is a purpose within determinism, you can neither fulfill it (the act of fulfilling requires agency) or obstruct it, it is only actionable through staying alive and requires no agency.  Purpose does not presuppose a deterministic existence, but a deterministic existence requires purpose because each sentient being can be boiled down to their biological (whether it be genetic or environmental) purpose. We know, for example, that each organism in an ecosystem serves many distinct ecological functions in the whole of the ecosystem and tend to act as such with little or no deviation. Because humans have such capacity for environmental alterations, it is challenging to differentiate what is biologically innate and what is societally constructible. It is my observation that we either quantify actions, such as the birthing and nurturing capacity primarily associated with females, as accordant with natural law by default or in accordance with societal construction by default. Of course, defaulting to one or the other discounts any potential agency and responsibility for an outcome as a consequence of agency. Therefore, I contend that humans act both intentionally and deterministically; our actions are a culmination of both biological and societal construction, but only to the point of a heightened-potential for influence on a decision.

As for how our free-will acts on our purpose, we can navigate this question by defining what a secular purpose might look like at its most profound:

            First, shed the conception of purpose as an enigmatic, profound, and impactful individual career purpose. Not every purpose within our human ecosystem, either biological or constructed, will manifest in your career; second, consider what you do now—once again, not as a career, but habitually. Consider your eating, sleeping, hygeinic, exercise, interactive, and intellectual routines as the best observable accounts of who you are and what you do; thirdly, consider everything you do as universal and applicable to everything that you physically perceive and the majority of everything that you cannot perceive. In other words, when you make your bed in the morning, you can physically see that your bed is made. The order that you, through agency, have applied to your life is perceivable to you and whoever else may see your orderly bed, but the psychological ripples created in the process of your willful productivity exponentiate indirectly and universally in ways that may be imperceivable by you.

            Abstaining from the metaphysical, this is the most evident purpose to be uncovered, and it is neglected regularly on many fronts.

            In this sense, we are born with a purpose, our actions affect it, and our actions provide potential outcomes with varying levels of desirability. Whether we positively or negatively impact ourselves and therefore those we interact with is our purpose. Our purpose within our society is as instrumental as each musician’s role in an orchestra. There is an element of freedom to deviate from order, but to deviate too far is to fail at fulfillment of your greatest potential purpose and risk excising yourself from the orchestra. We operate within our human ecosystem to the beat of a metronome, no different than the plants and animals of the forest.

            Consider a stream. It flows only in one direction. Of course, a stream has no agency, but it an be acted upon. If the stream is dammed, for example, its direction dictated by nature, or purpose of greatest value, is altered by a competing act of nature. If it is dammed to the extent that fish can no longer swim to their spawning grounds, it is fulfilling a purpose still, but not its greatest potential purpose as determined by natural law. In the case of the human purpose, our agency can often dam our greatest potential purpose.

            So, to the question of whether we are born with the purpose or we develop into our purpose, the answer is the former, with the caveat that we may fail at fulfilling our greatest potential purpose. We may be born with a biological purpose and forfeit it. This does not mean that we no longer have purpose, it just means that our purpose, or role, is of no value to us and we prefer to enact on another, less meaningful purpose. Therefore, there is a highest potential purpose for the individual within a community and every action or lack of action detracts from fulfillment of the potential; thus, leaving the purpose to be fulfilled by another agent or not at all.  

            As with any philosophical conundrum, whether we are born with a specific purpose or we discover our purpose is a small dilemma with large implications. If, for example, we deny entirely that there is a superior role for individuals to fulfill within a functioning society, we invite all the instruments to solo at once. This is a piece with little listening value. Even in Jazz, there must be an element of conformity in deviations. It is best to construct when and how the deviations will occur to maintain something listenable. So also, is our role within a society. When we trivialize roles that genders, body types, personality types, and innate talents play within society, we risk trivializing values which helped to construct benevolent societies in the first place.

We do not entirely need to alter our innate qualities to create environments without conflict. Conflicting philosophies, theologies, and purposes fulfill a greater purpose, even beyond that of a peaceful society. Recognition of someone’s innate qualities may, whether they like it or not, thrust them into a purpose they did not intend. But our intentions for our own purpose are not all that enact on the purpose we fulfill. If your intention is to be an astronaut but you are born with little intelligence or ability to act competently under pressure, your purpose might be janitorial work at NASA.

As harsh as that sounds, it goes to show how little of our potential is a product of our agency. What we do, what we say, what we value, and who we surround ourselves with, matters immensely. We may be born with a profound purpose, but pursue a lesser purpose.

So, if our greatest potential purpose is inherent and if there is a risk of either fulfilling it or succumbing to a lesser purpose, how can we go about discovering our purpose? Firstly, look at ourselves honestly and stop complaining about what you do not have. If you are not highly intelligent but are large and brutishly strong, do not try to become an outstanding intellectual. This does not mean that you cannot attempt to overcome inherited challenges, it means that you were born with a specific skillset that you can ride to the top of an adjoining hierarchy should you pursue it fervently. It does not mean that your skills and lack of skills define everything you do; it means do not habitually envy what others have and you do not. Striving to overcome challenges and failing or succeeding is the best way to measure what our talents are, but do not be sunken by your lack of inherent value as opposed to another. If everyone was an intellectual, we would have a whole society of ideas and very little of them would come to fruition.

This brings me full-circle: that we do have a purposeful role to fulfill, we do not always attain its end, we spend far too much time seeking or admiring purpose and not enough time fortifying it. What causes talent to manifest within an individual is not a necessary point to reason. Pondering what utopian societal conditions might create equality potentially propels us to attempt to create an environment that births total equal opportunity and equally valuable purpose from person-to-person. This is impossible. Instead, it should be our intention to nurture the good qualities and strengthen the bad within each of us so that we may provide the most useful version of ourselves to ourselves; and with that, value to others; and with that, a profound greatest purpose.

The Devil You Know: the State of the Church or the Church of the State?

It must be noted that the word ‘church’ can be used to define either a singular institution of faith or all carriers of the faith itself. It can be used to mean “a place I go to profess my faith,” or it can be used to mean “the faith we hold.” For the purpose of this article, we will be discussing ‘church’ as the state of a faith (in this case Christianity) versus the state of the institution. The distinction is minor, but with the many various forms of Christianity, it can be challenging to hold accountable the Catholic church and the United Church of Christ simultaneously accounting for their considerable deviations from biblical teachings. The Churches will not be specifically discussed, instead it is all those who claim the doctrine of the Christian faith (The Old and New Testaments.)

How long do we have to flip through the news stations to hear a story about our president sleeping with a porn star and paying to keep her quiet? With a story like this, two things are happening: left-leaning news and entertainment enhance the flavor by giving it more air-time than it deserves; right-leaning media and, since there are very few outspoken right-wing entertainers, conservative supporters point their fingers at the bias of the left-leaning news media and liberal politicians who historically have done the same thing. "It's a distraction from the real issues," they might say. On one hand, left wing atheists cry “hypocrisy from the religious right!”, and on the opposite hand the religious right hypocritically backs clearly immoral politicians and business owners because “at least they don’t suck-up to these snowflakes on the left.”

            How is this a Christian nation?

            “In God We Trust” is on our currency. When we say the pledge of allegiance, we have the audacity to say, “one nation under God.” Which God are we serving? Are we serving the God of the republic? Are we serving the God of the Tea Party? Is this the same God who told Peter “He who lives by the sword must die by the sword”? Is this the same God who said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Render unto God what is God’s”? Is this the same God who said “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."?

            These are not kind words for those who claim the law of the Abrahamic God. If you are looking for a God that values narcissistic, hypocritic, self-serving, judgmental, money-grubbing, shameless, earthly, egotistical, adulterous and unrepentant false Christians, don’t open the New Testament; you will not find that God. The God you will find meets very little of the criteria of the Republican Party, which claims this God most outspokenly.

             It can be made an easy task to point our fingers at the opposition who do not believe in the God of the Jews and say “this is a Christian nation. If you don’t like it, get out.” If you believe in Biblical sin, it isn’t hard to find someone who doesn’t and point out their sins. But we know those who do not believe will not follow. It isn’t our job to force them to; it is our job to follow and lead the willing. This is no easy task when the majority of “Christians” in this nation will throw their core doctrinal values to the wind as soon as some orange haired gorilla  promises to build a retaining wall and lower taxes. If you believe in Jesus with your tongue but not your feet, don’t expect someone who does not believe in Jesus to act in accordance with your doctrinal values. Don’t claim to live in a Christian nation when the churches are hardly even Christian.

            The truth is, there is no room for Christianity in our state. There is no room socially, there is no room economically, and there is no room internationally. Jesus was not a warrior. Jesus had no interest in condemnation for non-believers. They condemn themselves. Jesus and his followers were hardly materialistic, yet we live among the most material and economically driven nations in the world. We have more military bases around the world than any other country—and it isn’t even close.

           How are we a Christian nation?

           I am not claiming that the United States would be better-off to abandon its global materialism and accept foreign malevolence, but I am saying this: if you think you are a Christian and claim to follow the gospels, if you think the United States is Christian, if you think any form of your government is Christian, then you might think about reading Matthew through Revelation. Jesus does not spend a lot of time talking about nationalism, governmental law, foreign policy, or enforcing Jewish Law on Gentiles. Jesus was quite opposite of any recent major American politicians—and it isn’t even close.

           Unfortunately, God is dying, much like Nietzsche predicted. But it isn’t non-believers that killed him; it is believers. It's the Devil we know... I cannot fathom why anyone who doesn’t believe in a Christ would start believing if they looked at the examples of modern or historical Christians or “Christian nations.” The reason to keep the church separate from the state is not because the church should not be in the state, it is because the inevitable folly of man cannot be left out of the church. We cannot, in good faith, continue to claim our righteousness as reasoning for our political convictions. It is not our convictions that suffer but our righteousness. Humans are made to evolve, and so does the state, but if a state coincides with the church then the church too would evolve alongside the state. If the churches evolve, and I would argue the churches met their folly upon their creation, then righteousness and law begin to merge. As soon as biblical virtue evolves with modern moral norms, its importance dies.

            An atheist would find no harm in the devaluation of many Christian ethics, nor should they, they do not believe it. But if you claim it as your belief, you are then also accountable for upholding the belief and challenging those who falsely claim your belief. If you claim to be a believer but do not challenge divisive and immoral behavior within the church and within your supposed representatives, you are complicit in the killing of your God. This damage is irreparable and, if you believe it, you will stand trial. If this bothers you, consider these options: change your political support habits or don’t claim the Christian belief.  

            It is true, this nation has built some Christian values into its philosophy, but the values of material wealth, moral liberalism, and sexual exploitation have paved the way for a nation that is far more interested in its subjective welbeing than serving the most-high God. It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump and Jesus of Nazareth agreeing on much. Every time we accept the immorality of our peers within the church we deny God, and this is not to be taken lightly. It doesn’t mean you cannot challenge the sins of the opposition in defense of your faith, and it does not mean you cannot love your country as well; what it means is what and who we back matters. What it means is when you submit the church to the will of the immoral state you render unto Caesar what is Gods. The leaders we stand by publicly and what moral laws we are comfortable parting ways with in favor of our cognitive dissonance will be held against us.

But, you know… only if you believe that sort of thing.

“You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not faith alone.” James 2: 20-24

Little White Lies: A Compilation of Identities

Our character’s name is Max. Max wears a Cincinatti Reds baseball cap backwards. The cap rests on top of Max’s spiked crop-cut. Max wears a grey polo one size too large and a pair of kaki-pants two sizes too wide. Max is not outspoken, but has a soft and feminine voice with a tinge of urban masculinity. Max is a male, born a female.

Our character reminds me of a poster on the wall in my ninth grade teen leadership class which read “Be Yourself!” Many hours in this class I stared at this poster wondering what the implications could have been if we lived in a world where everyone was unapolligetically themselves. Would this be a desirable world? Would we “coexist” as simply as a bumper sticker spread across the rear window of your neighbors Toyota Prius would lead you to believe? Would the driver of the raised Ford F-350 with the confederate flag gliding through the thick summer air have any objections to everyone being themselves?

These questions may seem like rhetoricals, but they are not. Every person we see carries the wieght of their identity, hopes either outwardly or inwardly to be accepted by those around them, and is in a constant state of identity reckoning. But what is most curious about our idenity, as we percieve it to be, is that we construct it almost entirely.

Generally speaking, when we shop for clothes, get a haircut, buy a car, buy a house, or choose a sexual partner, either consiously or subconsiously we choose what we choose based on an idea of who we are, what use these things are to us, and how we are portrayed by these things to the others. We are rarely who we actually are. In reality, we construct ourselves from the bottom up with hopes of finding the perfect accent to how we feel about ourselves within a given period on the timeline of our lives. Max, at the age of nineteen, wakes up in the morning, puts on a grey collared shirt and kaki pants, puts a Cincinatti Reds hat on, and goes about the day. But Max is not a Cincinatti Reds player, Max is not the grey polo, the kaki pants, the $120 Jordans, nor is Max a boy. When it is all stripped away, Max, just like you and I, is just another consious meatball floating through space hoping to be something to someone or themeselves. Max has an idea of who Max is, but it is in constant evolution and is not to be taken without a pinch of salt.

Lets be clear, when it’s said “be yourself,” it is more than what we think of ourselves and what we choose as material representatives that define us, it is the content of our character. In a country deeply stricken by the virus of identity politics, (both right and left wings) it’s hard to know for sure if it is our beliefs that define our character, or if it is our actions. The “things” we use to portray who we are, weather it be tattoes, cars, or distinct fashion choices, act more on our beliefs than our beliefs act on them. The clothes you wear very minimally alter your character, and I would argue nearly always negatively. What gender you interpret yourself to be, what sexuality you are, what your skin color is, how much you love weed, or what sports team you represent are not representaions of who you are, you are representations for them.

Unfortunately, as I said before, your character can be altered by these things. “Power works both in us and through us” as my philosophy instructor would say. If that is the case, the influences around us are not so different from the things we use to influence others about ourselves. In this case, we should all be victim to our surroundings and our notions given to us about us. But simply existing in an atmosphere, if free-will exists, is not wholly enough to influence our decisions.

The danger of identity politics is the claim that our identity, whether it be our own percieved identity or the identity of our group, is who we are. I would argue we are much more than our appearance, we are far greater than our ubringing, and we always have a choice. If that  is the truth, then you are accountable for who you are. You cannot use your upringing or self-interpretation as an excuse for your shallow character. Instead of taking people at their word for who they are, take them at face value. If we take people at face value, we might see that they value, often narcassistically, representing themselves more than they value the content of their decisions. If your actions best represent how you identify yourself, which is often very far from who we are naturally, then your actions are in peril of being self-serving and shallow. You don’t need clothes, tattoos, or green hair to be you, you already are you. What defines you is your impact, your desire for purpose, and how you act on your purpose.

I heard a quote from Oprah Whinfrey once that said something along the lines of “find your truth.” It’s a widely propegated idea that we should always be in search for what is true to us and self-discovery. However, who we are when we are born is true. What we do and how we are perieved is true. We don’t have to search for our truth because truth doesn’t need us. We habitually tell ourselves little white lies about who we truly are, but we were truly who we are before we had any understanding that we were anything at all. Stop trying to invent yourself. Stop trying to invent your truth. The one thing we don’t have to do in life, yet still waste our time trying to do, is find ourselves. Take your clothes off, shut your mouth, and look in the mirror. That’s who you are. Accept it, put your clothes back on so we don’t have to see you naked, and go be great.

“There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things that come out of him, those are they that defile the man” Mark 7:15

Malware

As I read the essay on feminist ethics two questions come to my mind: what is the end goal? Is it achievable? Maybe more importantly would be the question; do we want to achieve it? This is a classic case of what you want may not actually be what is best for you or your society.

I would imagine that the end goal for the feminist, if indeed the feminist is the torch bearer for all oppressed peoples as the writer states, is an equal and pleasurable society. A counter to this might be that the idea of an equal and pleasurable society is utopian and unachievable, but I do not take that stance. Hopeless submission to tyranny is a poor argument to make, and it is tyranny that feminists claim to be obstructed by (patriarchy, white privilege, cist privilege, heterosexuality, dominant hierarchies= tyrannical groups). So, a proper and moral argument would be to first concede that a world free of tyranny is a world worth hoping for and fighting for. The question worth asking is, “what is equity?” We can all agree that total equality is neither useful nor achievable, so an intellectually honest feminist might answer “equal opportunity,” but he or she will most likely instead answer “lack of oppression.” They likely then will conclude that oppression and poor treatment of minority groups and women—lets just say anything that is not a white, straight, male—is not equality, therefore equality might be lack of oppression.

So, this may answer our first question as it relates to equality; the end goal is equality and therefore absence of oppression. Since any rationally minded person can agree that absence of oppression is “good” in our society, we then must ask the second question: “Is it achievable?”

I can only think of one means that could potentially achieve equality: government and law. Since we cannot, even as much as we try, police thought, we must then police actions in hopes to get to the thought. If we cannot train our pets to be polite to guests, we must train them to fear punishment for poor manners. To police actions, we must have a government willing to forego the liberty of the individual, therefore a government willing to police thoughts through policing actions. A government such as this must be willing to implement their viewpoints on their citizens and must then take the responsibility of achieving equity into their own hands. Thus, our thoughts would then be adequately policed through our actions which were governed not by liberty but by law.

The above explanation also then answers the question of whether or not this is worth achieving: No. If we are to place the responsibility of our own critical thought in the hands of a governing party, we have submitted all liberty and free-will (if you’re into that sort of thing), subsequently giving permissions to access our hard-drives of belief. I will grant that a lawless society is a dangerous society, but loss of liberty is not to be taken lightly. Arguing in favor of identity politics is an argument that a government should govern on merit of sex, skin color, or sexual orientation. Furthermore, it does not protect the individuals right to choose how they might perceive their surrounding environment, and this is not even a law God would impose.