What if there was no way to make the truth palatable? When I say “truth,” I mean the ultimate, objective, cosmically, mathematically perfect truth. The platonic Truth, the ultimate form that we cannot fully gaze upon but only peek in oblique glimpses from the corner of our eye? What if the truth was not something that conformed to our many frameworks and paradigms that have been haughtily scrabbled together by intrepid humans since the dawn of language? What if the truth did not lend itself to the values we claim to hold sacred? What if the truth was not equitable or reasonable or fair?
If God peeled open the sky for just a few moments and mega-phoned a few extra commandments down from the heavens tomorrow, how would the world react? No longer deprived of the factual certainty that we have lacked for the entirety of human history, how would this event change us? Would we recoil into our familiar bunkers of rationalization, one side claiming it was God, another that it was a David Copperfield-like mass illusion, others saying it was aliens, and a select few linking it (somewhat convincingly?) to George Soros? I suppose the answer depends upon the new commandments issued.
In fact I am certain of it. Suppose, for example, that the eleventh commandment was:
Thou shalt uphold, in all your words and deeds, the ideals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
I know it’s a ridiculous commandment, but God said it. Would you follow it? And just so we’re clear, the appearance of God in this hypothetical defies all human logic and understanding. His appearance is so grand and powerful and awe-inspiring that it leaves little room for doubt that a divine intervention had occurred. And the result of this divine intervention was to name Robin DeAngelo as His newest saint, and DEI as the new covenant. Would you get on board?
What if it went the other way? What if a new commandment was:
Thou shalt understand that I wasn’t kidding about women submitting to their husbands. Men - you are the spiritual and moral head of the household. Ladies - though shalt do what your husband commands.
How would that go over? I mean, this is God saying this. This is the creator of the universe, ostensibly perturbed with our behavior to the point that He leapfrogged the usual system of progressive revelation through prophecy and just went straight for the proverbial jugular. These commandments are the things we have to follow to enjoy eternal paradise, and defying them earns us eternal damnation. So obviously we would follow that commandment, right?
The fact that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that approximately 50% of people would not follow these commandments tells you everything you need to know about the western world today. The Western world is inherently atheistic, and even professed believers are more embroiled in the worship of politics than they are with the worship of their Creator. If such an event were to happen, this worship of politics would at least be nakedly apparent, and very quickly so.
Sure, there would be about a week of mass hysteria and conjecture. The event would probably get some euphemism tagged to it by the government like “the unexplained weather phenomenon.” But after a week or so, once we all came to our senses again, you know in the pit of your stomach what we would be greeted with. And just so we’re on the same page, here’s a short list of things I am nearly 100% certain would happen should the “women submit to your husband” commandment get issued:
Multiple TikToks regarding the “problematic messaging” of God.
Several hundred posts on X linking to editorials with titles like “It’s time we re-examine the authority of male-dominated universe” and “no, just because God said it doesn’t mean it’s your problem” and “Self Care during the Apocalypse; how to unwind after a day spent stressing about going to hell” and “A look back at the atrocities of the old testament and mankind’s trouble relationship with Yahweh” and “Umm…so does this submission thing mean that God is kink-friendly?” and “Turns out the male gaze can come from above” and “Welp, we should have expected a white God to say something like that.”
People would start protesting? I don’t even know who or what they’d be protesting to, but I’m almost certain this would happen in every major city.
Return of the mask mandate. Why not.
Merciless mocking of people who actually take it seriously.
Pope Francis issues a papal encyclical explaining that most commandments are optional, anyway.
At least one online therapy site offering Promo Code: TETRAGRAMMATON15 for 15% off your first session of marriage counseling.
I know some of those were funny, but I also believe that all of these things would happen in some form or another. What does this say about us?
What does it say about us that even a clear, overt, unavoidable, universally observed encounter with God would not be enough to bring humanity together in one shared purpose? How did we get to a historical moment in which an event like this would be mocked, denied, ignored, and debated rather than bringing about its intended effect of a crystal clear moral understanding of marriage?
I need to pause for a moment and take stock of the fact that, yes, I am doing the unforgivable here by setting up a null hypothetical that has not happened, then thinking about how people would react to it, and then getting upset about the hypothetical reaction of hypothetical people responding to a hypothetical scenario.
But…at the same time…you agree, don’t you?
In order to explain such a moment, we have to understand the core beliefs that underpin most of what is happening in western culture today. While even 40 years ago, people were still strongly invested in arguing the merits of seeking paradise in this life or the next, most have moved on from even considering that argument. Other than a few of us, most people believe - whether they admit it or not - that this life is the only existence we will have, that there is no ultimate truth, and that there is no purpose other than to maximize your position and to avoid pain. From these fundamental truths we can extrapolate some of the stranger modern social phenomena, including:
The neurotic worship of “childhood” and the obsession with over-validating the experiences and opinions of people who are scientifically stupid (kids and teens)
The proliferation of “taking offense” as a respectable career.
The social advantage of taking on the victim role and the social incentivization of reporting incidents of victimhood.
The automatic validation of experiences based on identity rather than proof, no matter how un-intuitive or downright false these experiences sound to outside observers.
The manic manufacturing of micro-identities and the obsession with having them externally validated at the threat of punishment.
The use of rapid boycotts and social banishment for those who do not participate in the belief that utopia is a thing built by the saying the right words.
The constant campaign of de-stigmatizing mental illness whilst simultaneously participating in the exact sort of social banishment rituals that cause mental illness.
The aversion to suicide whilst telling people who disagree with you to commit suicide.
The reckless association of arbitrary demographic identifiers with moral purity.
The celebration of underhanded feminine social strategies (e.g. gossip, pettiness, triangulation, reputation demolition, backstabbing) as virtuous and ethical, based upon a nebulous notion of historical course correction.
Among others. Almost all of these are fruits that blossom only in a framework that denies the supernatural. This is not to say that people are “more evil” today, but simply that actions once considered unhealthy, immature, unfair, short-sighted, or mean-spirited are not only condoned but celebrated. Why? Because why not? If there is no heaven or hell, no bearded man in the sky, no revelation, resurrection, redemption, or salvation, than what is left? All that we have is the empty accumulation of “points,” whether those points be in the form of money, upvotes, followers, suitors, employees, children, legacies, awards, degrees, titles, or otherwise.
It is the spiritual side of humankind that has always been the bedrock of the “quality” of human existence; without this quality we are left with only quantity. While some might be deluded enough to believe that their relentless pursuit of “accumulation” will at some point result in meaning or even satisfaction, most of us are either not obtuse enough to believe this, or not skilled enough to even have a go at it.
So why not blame someone for something that a person did who looked like them 400 years ago? If doing so is advantageous to you now, then what other value is there? Of course, there are some among those who would disagree with me who would say that I am falsely equating religious belief with morality. And to them I say I am equating it but not falsely. The fact that I ever let this kind of thing slide in my younger years upsets me to no end. That anyone could ever convince me that there is a reason to be moral without some sort of ultimate source of morality is something I will forever be humiliated by. “People don’t need religion to be good.” Sure, there are plenty of reasons to be decent without the promise of eternal reward or punishment, but the way things are panning out, it unfortunately seems like people aren’t able to be reliably and consistently and meaningfully good without it.
These are the same people that say humans came from crystal formations, or that God wasn’t the first mover and actually there was no beginning of time because of “quantum physics.” How did we let these people get away with this? Worse, why did I agree with them? Well the answer to that is something we have already established; I agreed with them because I was fundamentally atheist. Even though I grew up in Catholic household and professed my faith in God, even though I prayed to Him for forgiveness and had nightmares about going to hell for eating meat on a Friday in Lent, I never actually believed in God. Not in the way that I understand God now. I believed in God the same way that people “believe” someone they vote for. It is a mark of identity. It is a preference, an aesthetic “choice,” a desire to align oneself with a source of truth so as to resolve inner conflicts. And as the external conflicts of our world have dwindled, resolutions more immediate and urgent and accessible is now required. I cannot simply lob errant prayers up to an invisible silent God, I have to know that the person I’m praying to can hear me. Even better if they respond, or at least send a “read receipt” from their email when they open my message. Why believe in God when you can believe in Kamala Harris?
There was a video I saw today of a woman claiming that white people feeling joy is an act of oppression. I got upset about this, that weird sort of mad sadness that admitting to somehow makes people even more cruel. How could someone think this? How can we get people to stop thinking this? It was asking myself that last question that gave me pause. What am I worried about that I need to concern myself with what other people are thinking? To even get upset about that for me was an act of vanity. To even think that it is worth my time to convince anyone that what she said isn’t true is evidence that I still have more work to do in turning myself over to God. Of course what she said is not true. Of course a loving God would never doom someone to a life of misery and suffering because of their skin color. Of course a loving God would never want one of his children to tell others that they should feel sad even when they feel happy. Of course God needs no convincing that these widespread social theories taking root today explain nothing, that they are narrow and silly little things that some humans concocted in order to explain away other very valid (but more un-palatable) understandings of why they suffer. Of course God is not worried, and faith in God means I should not worry either.
To worry is to believe that God is uncertain. That God is susceptible to arguments and bickering. That God is getting older and “more chill,” like your dad suddenly not getting all bent out of shape about gay marriage anymore now that he’s retired. There is no case to be made to God other than our own case, our own submission to His will. There is no convincing God of your righteousness, for God already knows what is in your heart. There is no “technicalities” or “historical precedence” that can convince God why you chose to hate someone for how they look or what they think. These are actions that would only seem to be valuable and worthy uses of our time in a world that is devoid of a belief in God.
There are many games being played in our world right now, and the stakes are high and the penalties are harsh and the suffering is real. But the game itself is not real. To believe that it is real is to not believe in God, or at least it means we have not fully submitted our ego to God. If you truly believe that there is a divine creator, a loving being who crafted us in his own image, then that is the answer to everything. The time spent on responding to whatever preposterous new axioms are floating around in the social network is wasted, laughable, unnecessary. We must only take account of our lives and what we choose to invest ourselves into. This is something that I have come to understand more and more the older I get: there is no argument to be made against evil. The only proper response to evil is to do what is right. The only thing that is truly within our power is the choice of whether we will respond from a place of frail human fear, or from a place of love.
Assuming that everything could be measured, there is such a thing as objective truth. There are reasons that historical trends occurred, why civilization shook out the way that it did. I do not claim to know those reasons, but I do suspect that - if they were published tomorrow - those reasons probably wouldn’t conform to the clean-shaven and hyper-palatable oppressor theories swirling about in the noosphere today. The reasons would likely be strange, unintuitive, unexpected, and more or less charitable to certain groups over others. We have wiped many of our old ways off of the table, and we are granted broad social permission to ridicule those who still believe in “the old ways.” We live in a world where ideas that are five years old are accepted as a gold standard over concepts of family, sexuality, governance, identity, and community that were sculpted by tens of thousands of years of human history. What can you do in a world like this? The temptation is to reverse the tide. This, too, is vanity. And stupidity. The only answer is to serve God, do what we know in our hearts is true and honest and right. To love people, to help those who are in trouble, and to stand up for people who don’t deserve to be put down. That’s it.
There are some who would say that this is immature, childish, or misguided. But that is only because they believe that the games they are playing are actually real. That saying the right words and blaming the right people and rationalizing the right behaviors will somehow result in them “winning.” That voting a certain way or referring to yourself by a certain word or aligning yourself with a certain idea will lead you to some sort of salvation. But we already know where that leads. The polite way to say it is that it leads in a circle, meaningless and mirthless and alone until the very last breath.
Do not be distracted by the games of others. Do not be discouraged by the mass hysteria. Focus on God. Keep your eyes trained skyward. If you know the truth, do not concern yourself with using your every last breath to prove it. You know what that last breath is, it comes from the same place as the very first breath that was ever breathed into you.
Pope Francis issues a papal encyclical explaining that most commandments are optional, anyway.
This will probably happen in the next few years even if God doesn't reveal a new commandment!
"It is the spiritual side of humankind that has always been the bedrock of the “quality” of human existence; without this quality we are left with only quantity." As a community singer and song leader, these of your words resonated very deeply. Most (all?) singing traditions have faith as the centre with the stories of human doings weaving in, out and through. The submersion of self into the song interrupts the "games" and supports a return to the centre. I am facilitating a community singing workshop in April and ask your blessing to use the quote please.