At War With Oceania, Again

Without truth language would be a general fog of words above the silence; without truth it would collapse into an indistinct murmuring. It is truth that makes language clear and firm.   The line separating the true from the false is the support that holds language back from falling. Truth is the scaffolding that gives language an indepen­dent foothold over against silence.

Language becomes a world of its own, as we have said already; and language now has not only a world behind it—the world of silence, but a world near at hand—the world of truth.

The word of truth must keep in rapport with silence, however, for without it truth would be too harsh and too hard. It would then seem as though there were only one single truth, since the austerity of the individual truth would suggest a denial of the inter-relatedness of all truth. The essential point about truth is that it all hangs together in an all-embracing context.

Max Picard, The World of Silence

Reflection – I’ve had this quote staring at me on my computer for quite awhile now. Of course, this used to be my normal way of blogging – provide a quote, discuss the quote, and I still like to do that  on occasion.

This section of Picard’s book, which I have excerpted from time to time on the blog, is very much in his typical style—not so much a tight logical argument as a sort of meditative series of assertions around a subject—language, truth, and silence—to draw the reader into contemplation of these things. It is an unusual way of writing, but very effective.

A week or so ago I wrote a post wondering what the meaning of the word ‘gender’ was, in light of the breakdown of normative, anatomy-based male-female gender polarity. I don’t especially care to revisit that subject—one of the simple facts of my life is that, while I barely have time to maintain this blog, I really don’t have time to engage in long debates on-line around controversial and complex matters.

But this question of language and its relationship to truth is the deeper question yet, it seems to me, in this and in many other tough questions of our day. And this is why we cannot skip those hard philosophical matters in service of some apparent good done to others.

When language is no longer flowing from truth, when there is no longer a concern for the rigorous application of reason to the words we use to make sure that we are talking sense, then language not only ‘collapses’ as Picard says, but in the wreckage of its collapse the remaining shards of language only serve one purpose, and that is the acquisition and maintaining of power.

George Orwell had it all figured out: 'we have always been at war with Oceania'. So did Plato, in his controversies with the sophists. When words are no longer at the service of attaining truth, then they are only good for attaining power. It really is one thing or the other. Moral relativists who are uncomfortable with claims of absolute truth and our capacity to know the same have to confront that a world in which we cannot know the truth is a world where whoever has the loudest voice (and perhaps the money and guns to back it up) imposes their ‘truth’, or at least their agenda on the rest of us.

Power and its misuse as tyranny has always been with us. The mythical caveman with his club was not so much winning a debate with his inarticulate grunts, but rather taking a more direct approach with things.

I would argue that the whole project of civilization is the counterbalancing of power politics and dominance by the disciplined and ordered pursuit of truth. The speaking of ‘truth to power’ is not something invented in 1968, but is the key act which prevents our world from descending to the brutality of tyranny.

And that is why assaults on free speech on the one hand, and assaults on assaults on reason and disciplined debate on the other (the various schools of critical theory and deconstructionism that explicitly assert language to be naught but a tool of power and privilege) are a return to barbarism, and must be vigorously resisted.

That is what Pope Benedict meant when he talked about the ‘dictatorship of relativism’, and his words have become no less relevant in the ten years since he introduced that phrase.

I will get back to the second part of Picard’s quote tomorrow (sorry, Monday Psalter fans!), about silence as the counterbalance of truth-language. But for now, the main point I am making is that words matter, and it matters that our words make sense, and if we abandon the serious duties of truth and coherence we are opening a Pandora’s box of jackbooted nonsense—truth coming from the barrel of a gun and two plus two equals five because I say so and I have the power now, sucker. That kind of thing is what we have to fight against, and it is indeed more and more the way of our post-modern discourse.

Have I Got A Book For You!

Our Thursday commentary on the Mass and its application to daily life has reached one of the peak moments of the liturgy, the solemn proclamation of the Gospel. That this particular Scripture reading is different from the other two is obvious—it is preceded by an acclamation, often involves a procession with candles and even incense, and is reserved for the ordained clergy (properly, the deacon, but in the absence of one, a priest).

That we surround the proclaiming of the Gospel with such ritual solemnity communicates to us that here, Christ Himself is speaking to us. Here, God Himself has come down from heaven to directly communicate His truth and His will to us. It is not that the rest of Scripture is not inspired by God—it most certainly is—but that the Gospels truly are the words and deeds of God-made-flesh and so are indeed the core of the canon, the central Word of God, taken together with His living presence in the Church, by which we understand the entirety of Revelation.

And so it is proclaimed, week in and week out, day in and day out at daily Masses—the whole of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John laid out for the Church throughout the course of the three-year liturgical cycle. The Gospels, hopefully so familiar to the readers of this blog that I don’t have to go on and on about their content, are of course told in narrative form—stories, speeches, parables, miracles, conversations, arguments. All the normal way of telling the tale of who a person was and what He did in his life.

But in this, flowing through all of it, there is the revelation of a Person and Who He Is, and what He does continually in our lives, in all of our lives, in the life of the world. Written (as it must be) in human words and using human concepts and categories, the Gospels nonetheless contain the Divine life, the Divine presence. In them God draws very near to us and instructs our minds and hearts, and not only instructs them but shapes them, heals them, unites them to Himself. There is power in the Blood, the old hymn says. There is power in the Word, too.

And so when we come to talk about how to live this out, it is actually kind of hard to know what to say. We live it out… well, by living it out! God says ‘forgive, and you will be forgiven.’ So… we forgive those who have hurt us. Right? God says ‘if anyone asks for your cloak, give him your tunic.’ So… give to the point where it hurts. Right?

Don’t leave it as words on a page, or words you hear in Church, or you will be like the man building his house on sand (Mt 7:26), and we know how that turned out (Mt 7:27!).

But to be able to live them out, we have to be so familiar, so intimate with the Gospels. They have to be our second nature, so constantly present in our lives that whenever there is any serious decision to be made about any matter (or even just the daily grind and the choices it brings us continually), the words of Christ come to mind almost instantly, almost automatically.

So… we have to make the reading of the Gospels a daily event, a daily encounter with God in Christ in the sacred page. It can be as simple as having a missalette on hand and reading the Gospel of the day, or a sequential reading starting at Matthew 1 through to John 21 and then back again. Whatever—if Christ’s words and deeds are not continually informing our words and deeds, then our lives become continually less and less Christian. If His words and deeds are our daily ‘food for thought’, then our lives can become more and more a reflection of His life, and so we become a living Gospel for others.

It is so much the essence of our lives, if we are indeed His disciples, are indeed Christians. Along with the other, greater peak of the liturgy, which is the reception of His life into our life, His being into our being in the reception of Holy Communion, the receiving of the Gospel into our minds and hearts is the sine qua non of discipleship, that without which we cannot really say we are His.

Not to be pounding the book sale thing too hard, but that is indeed what I have just written an entire book about—how our own thoughts and ideas are all fatally flawed, and how the Thoughts of God, mystically and mysteriously communicated to us in the words of the Gospels, are the great healing of our own disordered thinking.

But you don’t need my book (shocking admission from an author!). You need The Book; I need The Book – the world needs The Book! And the best way to bring The Book to the world is for you and me to read it and live it and show it in how we treat people, so that just maybe our faithless confused world may once again ‘take and read’ and believe that God has indeed revealed Himself in Christ and made the path of life and salvation available to the whole human race.

Sexual Healing

Wednesdays on the blog I am presenting the various chapters of my book Idol Thoughts, on the traditional doctrine of the eight thoughts that take us away from God and how to pray with Scripture to overcome them.

We have reached the second of the thoughts, which is the thought of lust. Now, because there is everlasting confusion on this point, I need to clarify that what the Church means by lust is not simply sexual desire. God made us sexual beings with that strong drive towards sexual union—this is not something that in itself takes us away from God. The lie that the Church ‘hates sex’ is so commonplace that we have to keep clarifying this.

Sex is good; sex is God’s creation; sex is how God in His infinite wisdom ordained living creatures should reproduce; sex in our human creation is both an expression of that generativity and a faithful committed union in love. In this it becomes a most profound expression of our being made in God’s image and likeness, of the God who created the heavens and the earth and each of us in it out of love.

So what is lust, then? Lust is the thought that happiness is the body of the other. In other words, lust takes one aspect of sexuality—that it is intensely pleasurable—isolates and elevates that aspect to be the whole of it. Lust is the thought of using another person in his or her physicality to bring pleasure to oneself, apart from the God-imaged, God-designed purpose of sex as a fruitful union in love.

Well, I don’t need to  (and certainly don’t want to) go on any kind of intemperate rant to show that lust is rampant in our society. The so-called ‘adult entertainment’ industry is multi-billion dollar one, and the use of on-line videos and images to fuel lust is pandemic (I am avoiding the ‘p’ word so as not to get blocked in your spam filters!).

Meanwhile hook-up culture, the complete sundering of sexual encounters from any kind of relationship whatsoever, fueled by social media sites and mobile apps, is the norm for many young adults. The whole idea is to take what is one thing—sexual intercourse, openness to fertility, and committed union in love—and sunder it into its component parts so that none of those things are related to the other.

All of this is, strictly speaking, demonic. Strong language, but I mean it and stand by it. When that which is the most precious and extraordinary creature in God’s world—the human person, the one ‘thing’ about which we say ‘image and likeness of God’, is reduced to an assemblage of body parts for the pleasure and gratification of the other, this is a triumph of the demonic in the world.

The abuse of food in the thought of gluttony is at least an abuse of something that is in fact meant to be used. Food is for eating, after all, even if in our broken humanity we eat too much of it or make more of it than we should. But another human being is not meant as an object of use for my pleasure. We are meant to regard each person, every man and woman, with such reverence, such awareness that this person is a reflection of God’s glory, infinitely beloved of Him and destined and desired by Him for eternal life.

Lust utterly destroys that reverence and does incalculable damage to the person who is its object. It is such an assault on the human person, and in that such a rebellion against God’s whole plan of creation and redemption, that it is essentially a descent to the demonic sphere of reality.

Now in my book I do talk about the Scriptures that might help purify our minds from the false beliefs that underlie that struggle with lust in our world. I won’t go into that now (hey, why don’t you buy my book if you want to see what I say there!). I also talk about the need for discipline, especially what used to be called the ‘custody of the eyes’, the careful choice around what images we allow to wash into our minds and hearts in our lust-saturated media culture.

What I only mention in passing in the book, though, is that the whole of the Church’s sexual moral doctrine, which we believe is a faithful presentation of God’s will and God’s truth, is also the path to healing the deep wound of lust in the human person, a wound that does go to the very core of our broken humanity.

In other words, sexual intercourse is held within the covenant of marriage, a life-long commitment of fidelity and love, and held to be open to the generation of new life, and in this integration of sexual activity into fruitful committed love there is a perpetual healing of the dis-integration of lust. The traditional language spoke of marriage as a remedy of concupiscence, and that’s what it means.

By placing sex where God intended sex to be placed—within the indissoluble bonds of matrimony, open to children—the tendency to use and abuse the other, to reduce the other to an object of my ‘happiness’, is so situated that it at least can be healed (human freedom is such that it is of course not a given that it will be).

I have much more to say on this subject and all subjects, but will leave you to explore the rest of it for yourself.

All About The Money

Hear this, all peoples!

Give ear, all inhabitants of the world,

both low and high, rich and poor together!

My mouth shall speak wisdom;

the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.

I will incline my ear to a proverb;

I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre.

Why should I fear in times of trouble,

when the iniquity of those who cheat me surrounds me,

those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches?

Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life,

for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice,

that he should live on forever and never see the pit.

For he sees that even the wise die; the fool and the stupid alike must perish

and leave their wealth to others.

Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations,

though they called lands by their own names.

Man in his pomp will not remain; he is like the beasts that perish.

This is the path of those who have foolish confidence;

yet after them people approve of their boasts.

Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd,

and the upright shall rule over them in the morning.

Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell.

But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.

Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases.

For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him.

For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed

—and though you get praise when you do well for yourself—

his soul will go to the generation of his fathers, who will never again see light.

Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

Psalm 49

Reflection – Well, this is a psalm for our times, truly. I have become convinced over the years that as much as our society is obsessed with sex and eroticism, it is equally obsessed with wealth and the privileges that come with that. There is an almost creepy obsequiousness given to the wealthy elites of our world, while to be poor is to be a ‘loser’, a ‘nobody’.

This is at least part of the explanation for the bizarre appeal of Donald Trump right now – he is just so very, very rich—so hey, he must be qualified to be president, right? And this same worship of money, wealth, power so easily slips into Christianity—the prosperity Gospel is a perversion of faith, in which faith in Jesus manifests itself in becoming successful in worldly terms.

That is a heresy, of course, in the strict sense of the terms, a selective reading of the faith. Prosperity Gospel Christians select the Scripture verses that suggest that point of view, while ignoring the vast number of verses, like Psalm 49, that contradict it.

The truth of Psalm 49 and so many other key passages (the camel through the eye of the needle, the first beatitude, ‘foxes have holes’, and so forth) is that earthly riches have nothing whatsoever to do with virtue, with God’s favour, with anything at all really, that is worth running after and bothering about.

It is not that money is evil, but rather that it is not especially good. It is neither wealth nor poverty that wins us a share in the kingdom of heaven, but faith, hope, and love, and our whole energy as Christian men and women should be ordered towards those and not the size of our bank account, car, house.

I say this fully aware (having lived in North American society all my life) that there is a genuine idolatry of money in our world, an obsessive valuing of it that is fierce and beyond reason. There is real need in our day for young men and women to embrace voluntary poverty in the venerable path of consecrated life, and a real need for all Christians in whatever state of life to shake off the pernicious nonsense of money-worship, ‘the Lord is my financier’ approach to religion.

Jesus does promise to make us rich beyond our imagining—rich in love, rich in grace, rich in joy and peace and beauty. And yes, the kingdom of heaven is such that all have all they need and all rejoice in receiving and giving all from all for all to all. But the path to that kingdom of plenty and wealth is the path of total love and generosity and careless detachment in this life from anything that would distract us from the real business of life which is loving.

Psalm 49 is one among many scriptures that help us in this regard, so let us pray it, and the others as well, especially we poor greedy North Americans who honestly believe that money can make us happy and that being rich really counts for something in this world. May we repent of that foolishness, and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, amen.