The Golden Lampstands

The Golden Lampstands

ONE: The Apocalypse or Book of Revelation shows us the proper way to view the churches and the Church. Our Lord Jesus reveals hinself as intimately aware of the detailed virtues and faults of the seven local churches listed in the early chapters (Apoc. 1:17-3:22). He acknowledges their good but chastises them for their evils. He encourages them to be steadfast in virtue and to promptly repent from sin.

So we have a complete picture of the local assemblies or churches of His people being good but also containing serious evil that must be immediately addressed. Yet in this same book of Scripture we have the description of the Church as the woman glorified by the sun, the moon and the stars (ch. 12) and as the spotless Bride (ch. 21).

TWO: In St. John's first vision in the Apocalypse (ch. 1) Jesus is standing amid seven gold lampstands holding seven stars in his hand. The Scripture itself explains that the golden lampstands are the seven churches to whom the revelation is addressed and the stars are their angels.

Before the Book of Revelation we encounter the exact same Greek word for “lampstand” in Mark 4:21, Matthew 5:15, and (twice!) in Luke 8:16 and 11:33. Each usage concerns revealing – revealing good deeds or someone's goodness. While the Gospel of John does not seem to use the word for lampstand, the whole gospel speaks about light versus darkness: John 1:4-5 and 3:19 are important examples. In John the wicked love darkness to hide their evil deeds.

THREE: Jesus is within the lampstands. He is the light, the local churches display the light. Our Lord in the passages mentioned above says that we do not have a lamp to hide it but to put it on a stand for light. The Apocalypse is clearly using this imagery with the churches and our Lord. And please note: these “ecclesias” are not random slices of the Christian people located in some civic population center. Their identity should be seen as it is examplified in the rest of the New Testament – centered around the bishop and presbyters.

FOUR: Jesus speaks to the seven churches and details how they have responded to grace and how they have fallen to temptation. He reveals their spiritual condition – all are golden lampstands with angels in Heaven but they also obscure the light by falsehood, sin and mediocrity. Jesus says: “But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth.”(Rev. 3:16).

FIVE: Is it not extraordinary to our ordinary idea of the Church and the New Testament to realize that Sacred Scripture ends with Jesus' criticism of the various local churches? There is a tendency in churchmen with Holy Orders to attempt to hide their human limitations, mistakes, errors in administering the sacraments, pastoral bad judgment and sins by only emphasizing the holiness of the Church universal and our faithful obligation to love her and reverance her deacons, priests and bishops.

Every deacon, priest, bishop and pope is a sinner. They can be terrible sinners. They are often more in need of repentance and the sacraments than others in different callings. Does that imply a lessening of respect for them and their office? No – it means that we try to love and honor them as we would a parent. We honor our origin in the Church by honoring those we call “father”. But we honor the Church by following our Catholic moral and doctrinal training as officially given and interpreted by the Magesterium. We dishonor the Church when we passively go along with “pastoral” activity contrary to that training.

SIX: Enlightened by the Catholic Faith we can clearly see the development by the Church of her understanding of doctrine. As a case in point, simply read the Acts of the Apostles on the question of admitting and how to admit gentiles. But in viewing the wonderful increase in faith and numbers what is sometimes obscured is what was mentioned in FIVE – the human mistakes and sins of even New Testament Christians. During the gospels, did the Apostles understand and accept all that Jesus did and said? Throughout the Acts, did not the Church realize the fuller implications of Christ's redeeming act
(Acts 10:34 – 11:26; 15:1-29)? Was there not fraud (Acts 5:1-11)? Was there not jealousy (6:1-2)? Clerical ambition (8:17-24)? Disagreement and division between saints (15:36-41)? Fear about churchmen abusing authority (20:28-35)? Is not every epistle concerned with some falsehood, disorder or sin in individuals and the local church?

SEVEN: Yet, in spite of sin, there is the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ (Acts 21:2). We individual sinners and groups of sinners assembled in local churches can attempt to hide the light under a bushel basket but the Body of Christ, the Church, participates in the sinless glory of her head.

“The light shines on in darkness, a darkness that did not overcome it.” John 1:5

Post Script on Today's Scandals
See above.

Exploring Our Understanding of the Resurrected Life

The “our” in the title refers to two themes in this article: the Church's understanding and our own personal comprehension. As the Church meditates on the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and develops a deeper understanding of the mysteries, we in turn listen to this deveoloped doctrine and deepen our spiritual life.

Christology and Eschatology

You can have an intimate knowledge of the heart and mind of a person you love but still find it difficult to describe him to someone else. The Church during the first centuries would struggle to find the words to describe Jesus, especially to refute false statements about her Beloved. Today this is called "development of doctrine". Not that doctrine "evolves" into something different but rather the Church's understanding grows as a seed grows with genetic integrity. We see a summary of this growth in understanding in the ancient Apostle's Creed and the Christian-defining Nicene Creed. Jesus is true God and true Man. It is of first importance that we accept true doctrine about Christ, Christology. There is also no reason I know that our understanding of true doctrine about the last things, Eschatology, cannot grow as well.

Early Christians were instinctively moved by faith to reject opinions about Christ that belittled or impinged his true humanity or divinity. A similar theological situation in my opinion may exist today concerning our Christian belief in the nature of the resurrected life. We know that the people of God under the Old Testament grew in their understanding of life after death – from a vague image of a shadow in Sheol (hell) to the resurrection of the flesh. This later understanding is especially made clear in the scene of Jesus with Martha and Mary at the raising of Lazarus. We also see from St. Paul's letters to his churches that people were caught up in imagining what the resurrected life would be like. We Christians have continued to meditate on this life. The struggle is between exaggerating either the physical or spiritual condition of the resurrected ones.

Yet, today, while there is a great body of Sacred Tradition and Scripture concerning the resurrection, most Christians must rely on the creedal formulae “I believe in...the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” (Apostle's) and “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” (Nicene). Again, in my personal opinion the Church would benefit today from a definitive expression on the true physical condition of the resurrected body and the true dominion of the resurrected soul. Real human flesh under the power of a real human soul in heavenly union with God. Aside from this Catholic development I also think our personal spiritual progress is indicated by our idea of the “life of the world to come”.

Heaven

First, and above all, heaven is the result of God's love. We are in heaven when every stain of selfish sin is removed and we are completely in love with God and all his holy ones. Pope John Paul II affirmed this when he issued a very short ( a few small paragraphs) teaching about “heaven”. He stated simply that heaven is not a place but a state of being. It is the state of being in complete union with God. We, of course, should fully assent to this teaching. When a pope teaches that there is no salvation outside of the Church, we should also fully assent to that teaching as well. But both teachings must be received in the full context of all of Sacred Tradition and Scripture. True, to be “in heaven” is to be in union with God. However, our notion of a “state of being”, pardon the pun, can be amorphous. Being alive, being human, being Christian are states of being but ones that take place and need moment. It is not that the Holy Spirit, providing for the indefectibility of the Church, did not prevent an erroneous teaching by these Popes. It is that these statements can only be understood correctly surrounded by all of Catholic Tradition. In other words, they would be perhaps inadequate and misleading if taken out of that context. If I were there with Pope John Paul II, I might simply have remarked to him, “And the Resurrection?”.

Turning to John Paul II's great project, “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, we learn that it is essential that Man has a body and the dignity of the body (#364 – 366). We learn of the reality of Christ's risen body (#643 – 647). But we also learn that the risen body is “not limited by space and time” (645) and “beyond time and space” (646). The risen share, though as creatures always, the sovereignty of God over the world or universe. This clearly is shown in #645 when declaring that our Lord may appear at any time and in any guise. The point is that any state of being for a creature with a dimensional body will always require “place” even when that time and place is at the will of the gloriously risen one. We will not rise from the dead and our bodies evaporate or “ghostify” as we enter a catatonic ecstatic eternal state of being. Jesus did not ascend to the Father never to appear again. We not only believe in his resurrection and ascension but in “his coming again in glory”.

The Resurrection of Body and Soul

Do you think the Holy Spirit inspired the gospel words of Jesus in Luke 24:36-43 only as a teaching story? Jesus demonstrated that he was not just a spirit. Even earlier than this post-Resurrection appearance our Lord gave the starting knowledge of what the resurrected life would be like. The synoptic accounts in Mt. 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27 and Luke 20:27-36 detail his response to the Sadducees' rejection of resurrection of the body.

We can picture the Sadducee group. Barely able to suppress their grins, they approach this country “rabbi” with a delicious satire of the popular belief in the resurrection of the flesh. Surely he will make us laugh at his bumbling attempt to reconcile the ridiculous!

With calm authority Jesus wipes the smirk from their faces. You err, he tells them. Your very question is an error because you know neither the power of God nor the Scripture. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the living. Those who rise will not marry because they live like the angels.
Their life is founded on the abilities or law of the Spirit and is not dependent on the physical. They will not die, they are sons of the resurrection.

If we think about this passage carefully we will hear our Lord not only rebuke the Sadducees' sophisicated increduality about the resurrection of the dead but also his rebuttal of a naïve literalism about the event. We also err if we believe that the resurrection is simply a glorious resuscitation of the life in the Garden of Eden. We will not be running around sorting out spouses and third cousins.

It will be important to return frequently, however, to the Luke 24 passage I mentioned briefly at the start of this section. Jesus ate food. ( And perhaps also in John 21 though that is not perfectly clear – he certainly is protrayed by the inspired evangelist as cooking!) Jesus, risen and no longer dependent on food, eats. Is this done just to prove his bodily resurrection or is it an action that hints at the life of the resurrected? We will return again to this subject.

Our Spiritual Stage of Growth

A person's concept of life after our mortal death seems to be indicative of their spiritual development. Let me give two real descriptions of “heaven” I've heard from two people who may represent opposite ends of the spectrum. One good fellow is very religious in his conversation and is constantly available to others for concrete advice and prayer. When he speaks about heaven he describes becoming so united to God that we become God. He imagines a total union of love that we never achieve with God or neighbor in this life. When asked about our Catholic faith in the resurrection he is really not interested. For this person, body and place are simply besides the point. We will be united to God, the source of all good. Nothing else has value. Toward the other end of the spectrum, another friend describes a lovely cottage in a cozy country setting. In that cottage he can be a master carpenter building beautiful furniture. He is imagining the peace, personal serenity and skill that we want in this life but, again, never achieve.

Both pictures of heaven ssek the fulfillment of the heart. So, is the spiritual focus on the Beatific Vision much closer to the mark? Perhaps – but the second one includes the created universe and the neighbor that the furniture is being built for. What happens to our Lord's risen Body in the first vision? To our blessed Mother and the angels and saints? To the “new heavens” and “new earth” spoken of in Revelation? As it is necessary to keep in balance our Christological beliefs in the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, such a balance is necessary for our view of the resurrected life. We must acknowledge, in our idea of this life to come, God as center and also the real goodness of creation and the dignity of our intellect, free will and body. Again, it is vital to remember that Jesus Christ is True God and True Man. We must also keep in mind both the spiritual and physical victory of the Resurrection. Personally I go along with another friend who says every time he imagines our heavenly life, his ideas soon deflate or “go squish”. We simply do not have the ability to see the resurrected life.

A Suggested Comparison

An effective way to proportion the relationship between our lives now and our resurrected life is to compare the unborn child to the adult man or woman. Look at the developing of the unborn but especially at the point where soon they will be born into the world. They are comfortable and seemingly secure in their mother's womb. Yet they are unseeing in an environment of extreme limits. While warmly enveloped they may feel the satisfaction of sucking their thumb. We may imagine them knowing something of “the other than self” by awareness of the bodily processes of the mother – heart beat, blood circulation, digestion, outside sounds and bumps and voices.

Yet what do these unborn children really know of the “born” world? Compare a healthy unborn baby to the fully grown healthy adult. The adult lives in a world that is almost literally infinitely larger. The adult has light versus constant shadow. He has the vision of others. His movement is again infinitely greater – just think of the vast difference between a young athlete and the same person in the womb. Beyond the physical, an adult has a mental and emotional world that defies the comparison. From others he has learned language, community, skills, love. Further, as adults we “sense” the spiritual mysteries as an unborn child would have a vague, undefined perception of the greater outside world. We who believe in the life that comes after the death of this body should realize that we are like an unborn child. The resurrected world will indeed be seeded from this one but more gloriously expanded. As St. Paul remeinds us, faith does not hope in what is seen. Again, we truly have no adequate idea of the glory of our risen life.

While it is true that we cannot know the glory of the risen world, something of the full growth can really be seen in the seed just as we relate the newly conceived baby to the born adult. We can catch perhaps a glimpse of our resurrected life in the Alpha of our Lord's resurrection – Jesus rose from the dead in a glorified body and ascended to the Father in that glorified body. But that body did not then evaporate. Remember that the Church teaches that even in his natural span of life Jesus had what we call the beatific vision. Yet the Scripture clearly shows us that Jesus lived like us in all things except sin. The Godly vision of the risen Just will not make the redeemed physical universe disappear – our world will end by transformation as, caterpiller to butterfly, the child is transformed into the adult, as Mary's body was transformed at the Assumption. We will not be left lying down on a blank planetary sphere in a physical catatonic state while our spirits enjoy a solely spiritual communion of the angels and saints. We will move, see, communicate and love God and neighbor in a way beyond what we can now. When we strain to imagine it, we use our limited womb-like experience and fail. But this unborn baby expecting merely a larger womb-world of warm comfortable bath water will be wonderfully surprised.

St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles

In the last book, book 4, of the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas examines questions concerning the resurrection. In chapter 83 he denies eating and sexual union for the resurrected life. As far as I personally can understand the subject, I find his explanation of our Lord's statement about marriage and the resurrection to be reasonable. On the other hand, Thomas has an “awkward” (the way Aquinas himself describes ideas that are incomplete, inadequate or self-contradictory) stance on why Christ ate after the Resurrection. St. Thomas starts with the premise: “For, when the corruptible life is taken away, those things must be taken away which serve the corruptible life.” (SCG 83:2) Eating and marriage serve only to preserve human life. Since we will be immortal, no such activity would be necessary. St. Thomas says that even in their innocence the first humans, “Adam” and “Eve”, were imperfect because the human race was not yet multiplied as God commanded. Aquinas certainly seems to imply that God intended a specific number of people – when achieved marriage ceases to have any point. I think it is spiritually wise to accept our Lord's words and see that a union of two people, that ends in death, with the purpose of producing the fruit of increased charity and, hopefully, children will pass away as obsolete. But eating? Why “must” all the seemingly unnecessary disappear? Will conversation disappear? Will play disappear? Will art disapear? Music? And how about my friend who wants to make beautiful tables and chairs at which to share this “unnecessary” physical act of communal eating?

As mentioned, Thomas likes to speak of concepts as “awkward”. While Thomas acknowledges that Jesus ate after his Resurrection (Luke 24), he goes on to say that Christ was only doing this to prove the reality of his resurrection: “Hence, that food of His was not changed into flesh, but returned to the prior material state. But there will be no such reason for eating in the general resurrection.” (SCG 83:19)

Yes, The One who can enter a locked room and offer his wounds to the Apostle Thomas demonstrates that the Risen body is in control of the physical. Yes, and we will not have to prove to others that we are truly risen. What is not mentioned, however, is communion. Both meals and the marital act have a supreme value for humans above “the brutes” of being the occasion of possible growth in community. (The difference is that many can share in a meal for mutual physical, social and even spiritual nourishment while the marital act specificly joins husband and wife for a limited union directed at the possible fruit of that union – emotional and spiritual growth and children.) St. Thomas Aquinas states “only the occupation of the contemplative life will persist in the resurrection”. (SCG 83:24) As I have opined, Aquinas' vision of the heavenly or resurrected life relects his own spiritual life – granted, a very advanced spiritual condition. Yet I must ask, does the risen contemplative have a mouth and talk? Have legs and walk with his brothers and sisters? Does he have eyes and admire the awe-inspiring beauty of the redeemed and now transformed universe? No marriage, no eating, only contemplation – a super monastery? I liken such a view of our risen relationship to God to those who realize the sun is the center of the planets and the fuel of life yet would await the consumption of all in a super-nova. Like Jesus showing his Wounds and eating, it was all a pretense.

Here is the basic question. The soul is perfected in heavenly union with God, the ultimate act of contemplation. But why have a risen, glorified body? As a mere static platform for that contemplation floating in a pre-Copernican ether? In defense of Aquinas his following chapter 84 is a strong confirmation of the reality of the risen body and our Lord's words in Luke 24: 39 - “...for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see me to have”.

It is clear from Genesis, from our Lord's Baptism in the Jordan, and from the groaning of creation cited by St. Paul (Rom 8:18-25) that the physical universe is good, made sacred by the Incarnation and awaiting final transformation. Think again about our Catholic teaching not only on the Resurrection of Christ but also the Assumption body and soul of Mary. Ultimately, the greatest case against an excessively spiritualistic view of our experience of the heavenly life is simply love of neighbor. “...one who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20) Jesus is clear that the love of neighbor and self are simultaneous with the love of God. But, someone may object, in heaven we will have direct spiritual communion between God, our self and our neighbor. I repeat the response, why have a risen body? No, in the risen life the “planets” will not be absorbed into the sun. Again to be fair to Aquinas, his subsequent chapters declare that the body will be perfected by the blessed soul and share in the sovereignty of God. To repeat myself, as was said in the comparison to the unborn child, we cannot imagine our resurrected life but we can live in hope.

In the end, the greatest weight must be given this consideration: the Flesh of Christ that suffered scourging and crucifixion must in justice share in his Victory.

Suggested Readings in Scripture about the Resurrected Life

All Scripture and Tradition can only be understood within the Church, the Body of Christ.

Psalm 16:10-11
Daniel 12
Mt. 22:23-33
Mark !2: 18-27
Luke 20:27-38; 24:36-43
John 20:19-29; 21: 1-14
Rom. 8:18-25
1 Cor. 15:35-58 (Body transformed: “Not all of us shall fall asleep, but all of us are to be changed...”
1 Thess. 4:13-18 (Unlike Protestant rapture fantasies, this re-affirms 1 Cor. 15)
Phil. 3:17-21
Rev. 21:1-3

Scranton Coal Mine

You know the song …

Sixteen tons and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don’t you call me
Cause I can’t go –
I owe my soul to the company store.

A few months ago I went to the coal mine tour here in Scranton, PA, with my wife and my brother-in-law. Historically and morally it was an eye-opening experience. If you had said to me before this tour that coal miners and even children had been exploited by mine owners I would simply have nodded in agreement. This is an accepted assessment of a general historical situation. While after the tour I certainly appreciated the almost impossible situation of the coal miner’s family, I was truly astonished at the amount of unrelenting child abuse. Children were not only employed in the dangerous coal sorting work outside the mine but were constantly injured and killed down in the mine as part of the standard workforce. One job: lead the coal hauling mule through the tunnel. If the boy and mule died… the family would owe the company the price of the mule. These boys were often employed because their father had died working for the mine. That gets us back to the opening lyric.

A miner was required to excavate eighteen tons of coal in order to get any pay for that day. Yet nearly everything he need to work and live had to be purchased from the company store. Hence you always fell into debt. When a man died working for the mine a company lackey would bring his body to his home. The widow would then have three days to pay off his debt or give a son to the mine to prevent her family from being evicted from her company house.

Economic Zen - Neti, neti - Not capitalism not communism.

How are things different for us today compared to these mine workers? What does it really mean to be “employed” in our society? First, it means you do not have the means to support yourself – you do not have the independent business, trade or wealth to buy food, clothing, shelter, etc. for yourself or your family. You need to ask someone else for the work necessary to make a living. If someone cares to employ you for their business they know they have you at a disadvantage. Whether your pride admits to it or not, you have the status of a beggar. Do what your employer demands or lose the means to care for yourself and your dependents. But is it not fair? Did your employer force your parents to be poor or have no family farm or business or force you to have no trade? The employer is simply offering a fair exchange: work for food. Are there no homeless shelters? No welfare? Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?

When researching this article I read about indentured servants in colonial America. I had thought there might be a useful comparison. There was a comparison but not the one you might suspect. Many indentured servants were far better off than most modern American employees. When their period of indenture was completed, these individuals were often able to buy their own farm or business. What is the percentage of American workers who can work for an employer for seven to ten years and then be given the means to buy their own business? A much, much lower percentage than among indentured servants it seems.
We are longer-lived coal miners.

The story of how we became coal miners is the history of the industrial revolution. But it is not the history of mass production but of the ownership of the means of mass production. Researchers in the past decade discovered an interesting historical anomaly – Henry VIII of England in his zeal to attack the Catholic Church destroyed a monastery where the monks had developed mass produced modern steel for their tools. Imagine (better than yoko-onoized John Lennon) a world where the means of mass production was owned not by wealthy individuals or phony corporations but by villages, monasteries, neighborhoods, families? We would not need to be exploited as assets by private capital but struggle to work together as neighbors and family.

Private capital should remain private. When a private individual or “corporation” can virtually buy the whole life of another human being (laborers, clerical workers, coal miners, slaves), private capital by definition has exceeded its rightful place and encroached on the res publica. This usurpation damages our shared community. This is political – in the Aristotelian sense of the right ordering of society. No one should be able put a mortgage on themselves or another.

While private capitalism engorged on the power of modern mass production is abusive, the anti-matter solution of State ownership proposed by Marxism is simply changing the bosses and not the real status of the worker. The difficult road to journey is to promote anything that returns ownership to natural human communities where that community cannot shirk its responsibilities to its members. Profit and enterprise are still very necessary - not the profit intended to expand individual riches but the profit necessary to maintain a natural growth in family, village, etc.

We look at the enormous needs of our family or friends or the world and it is easy to become discouraged. At the risk of being “preachy”, remember the multiplication of the loaves. Start doing some determined good and let God worry about the rest.

Feature: The Falling Boy

1.

When I was eight years old I remember walking up to our second floor apartment starting to cry. My mother at the door looked at my wet eyes and asked, “What’s the matter?” I told her I had seen another boy walking with his big sister and he was constantly falling to the sidewalk. No one, not even his sister, would help him. My mother just looked at me and said, “Why didn’t you?”

My tears stopped and I was stupefied. I had expected my mother to be sympathetic with my tearful sentiments. Instead her remark pointed out that I had the power to help someone and I had failed even to see it.

Was it her intention to hurt my self-esteem? She did not follow up her comment with any lecture or discussion. She had no desire to ridicule. I received a short to-the-point medicinal shot that lanced misused sentiment and made me realize that I was empowered to help someone and not just feel sorry for them. Here, perhaps, is the beginning of why we hesitate to give or receive correction. We will see our unpleasant reflection in a mirror – our pride challenged and our weakness exposed. How much more comfortable are the confines of a false man-made image of ourselves, of others and of the world.

We don’t like medicinal shots. What a harsh world if we were to expect everyone every time to be a doctor administering some medical procedure. Ah, but I’m willing to take my medicine and become a better person! But do we really want our eyes opened? I wish I could say that my mother’s “Why didn’t you?” was a life changing moment. With no exaggerated self-deprecation I estimate that ninety-nine percent of the time after the incident of the falling boy I was still blind to the way I could help others. Thomas Merton once wrote that we do not seek the truth but the half-truth that justifies us. It is painful to face ourselves and even more daunting to take up the task of healing or strengthening.

2.

We don’t want to make the difficult journey all the way to truth. We tire easily and want to settle for a substitute, an idol, a Golden Calf. We are reassured and made comfortable when joined by so many other worshippers of the Calf. I enjoy the security of being with the crowd. They confirm my subjective opinions and my self-image. The crowd protects me.

Not only am I reassured and protected by my fellow Calf-worshippers but I seem to make physical and emotional profit from them. With others at my side I can laugh and mock the falling boy, immune to dangerous sentiment and sharing the intoxicating drink of our normalcy.

At this point we not only dislike facing the truth but we begin to fear being cast out of what we see as normal human society. Perhaps not only to be cast out but attacked. And with long exposure to this intoxicant comes addiction. We don’t just get drunk once and regret it. We need the intoxication all the time whether alone or with companions.

Addicts are hostile to attempts to moderate their habit. Most of us seem to react with instant anger to any evaluation pointing to any mistake or problem. Even after we are told we are good and right in every way but one, we usually ignore all the positive compliments and focus solely on the single negative. We see it not as a healthy opportunity but as an undeserved piercing insult.

Falsity can be inebriating at first but it always ends in some kind of harm. Yet so can overdosing on “honesty”. The power of being critical, realistic, honest gives me a high. I stand upon a mountain looking down. Uttering lies about another person is so obviously tawdry – far beneath me! I’m going to inform you! “Did you know he used to…?” The taste of “telling the truth” about someone in order to subtract from that person’s attraction by detraction is sweet. It is our most frequent and entirely overlooked misuse of “being honest”.

3.

Originally I only wanted to think and write about the puzzle of why we don’t speak the truth to each other. Sure, I realized immediately that what is objective reality and what we think is true are not necessarily the same. Yet the personal moral question that perplexed me remained – why do we withhold our full understanding, knowledge and insights from other people? But my notes and reflections were abruptly silenced just as my childhood thoughts on that second floor landing. I realized how “honesty” was most often arrogance and it had frequently distorted my perception of the real situation. Forty-six years after “Why didn’t you?”, I was still focused more on other’s behavior and not my own. I was staggered again. I had forgotten my role. I assumed and hid in a misshapened version of my mother’s: Why didn’t he? Why didn’t she? Why don’t they?

When you worry about how the rest of the world responds, it distracts you from your own response.

4.

Jesus said not to try to take the speck out of your brother’s eye until you take the plank out of your own. People forget that he did go on and say that once the plank is removed then you can see to take out the speck.

How do I remove the plank, take out the speck?

Who would deny that conducting any surgery, especially eye surgery, on someone else is easier than on one’s self? I’m going to have to ask somebody to help remove that plank from my eye. I don’t want to overbuild on the hyperbole of Jesus but going to try anyway.

- Knowing I have a log jutting out leaves me cautious in approaching my brother’s speck. I don’t want to poke his eye out or smack him in the head with my plank.
- Knowing I have a plank and getting help pulling it out might teach me some skills necessary to operate on Brother or Sister.

Again, only somebody else can really assist us in getting out something stuck in the eye of our moral vision. While the company of the Calf deludes us, it is only through others that we come to know the truth. My mother showed me the difference between a helping hand and ineffectual sentimentality. I need the example and instruction of others. Who has enlightened you?

The cliché is that we cannot see the back of our head. In fact, we cannot fully see our physical or mental state without the mirrors provided by other people. We cannot even become self-aware without the presence and language given to us by others. Self-awareness is not the result of mere complication. Some imagine that the increasing evolutionary size and ability of physical brains (applied now also to artificial brains) leads, like critical mass, to human consciousness.

We simply wake up as from a dreamless sleep and are self-conscious? No one need speak to the first self-aware creature, “Awake”? This is the same logical fallacy as the self-creating universe. Someone who has never achieved any particular level of awareness ultimately needs the agency of another’s look, word, picture, sign or sound to enlighten them.

5.

The difference between those intoxicated with the drugs of falsehood or arrogance and those whose eyes are full of specks and planks is that the first group have damaged judgment that requires them to reach a point that sobers them while the second group have basicly sound judgment once the impediment is removed. This second group are not usually Calf-worshippers but a fraternity capable of mutual correction. There is no fraternal correction of the Calf people, only casting pearls before drunken, stumbling swine. Members of the cult of self can be compared to domesticated animals because they live caged between birth and death. They see only what this temporal span can hold and that leads humans to every kind of physical, mental and spiritual violence.

When a person recognizes and accepts the difficulties of journeying to the promised land of the truth, they become free. This is not the faux substitute of mere “independence” – freedom from Egypt, freedom from Rome, the British, slavery, etc.. This is the free man or woman who leaves the limited world of self and is alive in the real world of Creation.

Perhaps a surgeon could kidnap someone off the street and, restraining them, perform successful surgery. But moral correction needs cooperation. I have been both a stumbling pig and a resigned patient. Looking at me, or anyone, it may be very difficult to tell which at what time. So, since most of us most of the time are morally uncooperative, many instances of attempted fraternal correction have left us with a bad taste in our mouth. This negative pavlovian training makes us excessively shy about offering correction to others.

How can I tell if I’m helping a brother or sister with a speck? Or arrogantly showing my power to step on another person by harsh judgments? Or throwing a pearl to a pig? One possible clue is that arrogant Calf-worshippers want to attack those who differ. Speaking for myself, I have rarely approached others with the gentle, skilled hand of fraternal charity. Finger-pointing, fault-finding are the hallmarks of being judgmental. Using our abilities to help others when they come to us or are legitimately placed in our care is love.

There is a lot of unnecessary and /or poor surgery in the world.

“Facts” should not be used as weapons. We use insight and knowledge according to the patient’s need. Kindness and courtesy are medicinal.

Do we need to say anything at all? Do we need to be “blunt”? Jesus spoke first of “sleep” when he meant death. Sometimes people really have no need to know some fact. Why disturb them when they might not understand this “fact” or be able to do anything about it? I certainly have to stop myself from pasing on “facts” that only serve to scandalize or slander. Sometimes people have no right or need to know what I know. I don’t tell them a falsehood. Yet, must I volunteer extra knowledge to correct their ignorance or misunderstanding? Cardinal Newman’s debate with Charles Kingsley in 19th century England on equivocation expands our sense of the care we should take in dispensing the medicine of truth. Need we voluntarily surrender every fact to others even when it could hurt us, them or someone else?

Being truthful does not require emotional public nudity. Simply to strip ourselves in public of all personal private thoughts and secrets is destructive. There is a difference between not speaking up out of fear and not revealing all out of concern for the ability of another to understand or benefit. The analytical realist often is not being realistic. Analyzing something or, worse, someone is frequently the dissection after death. The living whole needs to be communicated and received in order to be understood. Everyone will nod when this is said but most of us will return to the superficial look which ignores the subject or the analytical stare which eliminates the subject.

6.

You may have noticed that the incident of the falling boy was more about orthopraxy (doing what is true) than orthodoxy (knowing what is true). There was no dispute that the boy should be helped – I just didn’t realize I should be the one giving the aid. But what help to others could the falling boy offer? A silly question – after he recovers then he can find his own ways to assist others. And what if he never recovers and is always falling? Or he thinks he is always in danger of falling?

Many of us suffer from what I call the drowning man syndrome. A man gulping his lungs full of water cannot consider the needs of people standing on the shore. We are so desperate to get the necessities of life that we feel we can’t look to the needs of others. This attitude can continue in our souls even after we are comfortably aboard the life raft. I’m still drowning, I’m still struggling to support myself or my family, what can I really do for others?

What are a few loaves and fish among so many?

7.

I won’t speak the truth because of self-serving doubt – “How can I be right and know the truth?” So I will keep silent and feel very humble – as the truth is ignored or attacked. I will suppress urges to speak the truth because of hopelessness. Again I address the dumb idol in my heart – “Why should I? It will make no difference.”

The task is arduous and we refuse the effort. Or we take the “lazyman’s load” and want to rush the work of explaining our understanding.

Our pride convinces us to be always right. We want to win the debate, win the election, win the job, not speak the truth.

Sometimes, like very young children we innocently speak the truth as we understand it in our hearts. Why did Jesus say that we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of God?

Sometimes, like martyrs trusting in God, we stand and witness.