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Where the Sword Drops

4/29/2022

In Hungarian culture, the Turul is a sword-carrying mythological bird of prey symbolizing the founding of nation. Legend has it that the original Magyars followed the Turul to the area of present-day Hungary and decided to settle in the region after they witnessed the Turul drop its sword near the bank of the Danube where the city of Budapest would eventually be established.

Several Turul monuments exist in Hungary today. Among the most prominent is the Turul statue perched upon the summit of the Gerecse Mountains in the former mining city of Tatabánya, 55 kilometers west of the Budapest. The statue is visible from the main highway leading into Budapest, and I have seen it from a distance the dozen or so times I have traveled east toward the capital.

Last weekend, the little hiking club that has formed in my village traveled to Tatabánya to hike in the Gerecse Mountains, which gave me the opportunity to finally see the monument up close. The hike itself was splendid. The trees here are sprouting, but the new leaves have yet to cast the forest floor in shade, which allows the young shoots, plants, and flowers to emerge and cover the forest floor in a fresh and comforting velvety green.

It took a little over two hours to reach the crest upon which the Turul monument sits. During the hike, my mind sank into a peaceful and contemplative mode of unthinking-thinking. Rather than consciously forcing myself to think certain thoughts, I granted my thinking room to wander -- or more correctly, room to settle -- on the sights and sounds of the forest as I passed through it.

The Turul monument itself is rather impressive, but given the current state of the world, it left no deep impression on me as a national or historical symbol of Hungary.

Nevertheless, on the train ride home I found myself thinking a great deal about the Turul bird dropping its sword as an indication of having arrived at the homeland or, more generally, at the place to be.

I was born in the United States, spent a great deal of my life in Canada, later lived and worked in the US again, and moved to the northeast of England for a short time. I have lived in Hungary, which is the country of my heritage, since 2015. Like the ancient Magyars, I have spent most of my life wandering in search of a homeland. Though I had not actively followed a massive bird of prey carrying a sword, I realized that I had always been waiting for a sword to drop somewhere in this world to indicate the place for me to "be".

Well, it appears the sword has indeed dropped. My current personal circumstances and the place in which I find myself have become home. I will wander no more. But the dropped sword has little to do with grand historical notions of nation or culture and everything to do with small personal notions of place and relationships. Whatever I have left to learn in this life will be learned in the place I am now.

When my life in this world ends, I will wait for Christ to pick up the sword. The place in which He chooses to drop it will indicate my eternal homeland -- the place I truly yearn to "be".

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The Common Good Today Is Neither Common Nor Good

4/27/2022

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Much of the unprecedented evil that has flooded the world since 2020 has been enabled by individuals heeding the call to act for the common good -- but what exactly is the common good today?

Well, the common good since 2020 has been neither common nor good. I would go as far as to say that all notions of the common good have morphed into uncommon evils.

As far as I can tell, the common good possesses no real proper of existence of its own. At best, it strikes me as an abstraction that inverts the spiritual imperative of "personally" acting for the good of one's neighbor; more specifically, acting for the good of a concrete being. Even more specifically, acting for the spiritual good of the concrete being. Hence, acting for the common good should be largely a matter of being spiritually motivated to act at the level of personal relationships for primarily spiritual purposes.

Contemporary conceptualizations of acting for the common good do not involve the spiritual good of concrete beings but the supposed material well-being and safety of abstractions. Ironically, those who have acted for the common good in the hope that it might secure the well-being and safety of the community have actually aided in achieving the opposite.

For example, adhering to the global diktat of none are safe until all are safe has kept no one safe. Subscribing to various green initiatives and movements has not made the planet any greener. Embracing the sexual revolution, alphabet people rights, and the trans agenda has not made society better. Supporting the country of the blue and yellow horizontal stripes has not improved the geopolitical situation.

Divorced from its original spiritual foundations, contemporary rallying cries for the common good are nothing more than justifications for endless forms of slavery -- most prominently spiritual slavery.

It's time to drop the common good inversion and see it for what it truly is -- uncommon evil.

What we need instead is uncommon good -- good that is personal, spiritual, and concrete. Each of us needs to discover this uncommon good for ourselves. We also need to personally discover how we might be able act for the uncommon good once we have determined what it is.

If nothing else, we can focus on thinking the uncommon good. In fact, thinking the uncommon good might just be one of the most powerful actions we can take.

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Overcoming the Allure and Impact of the Bombshell

4/25/2022

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The word bombshell has two distinct connotative/metaphorical meanings in English. On the one hand, it is often used to describe a very attractive woman. On the other hand, it can also be an unexpected, surprising event or news that turns out to be unpleasant. In my mind, these non-literal definitions tend to blur together to create a condition in which one is drawn toward an event or information that surprises in the negative.

I mention this because the word bombshell has been thrown around a great deal in the past two-plus years. These days the word relates to shocking and sensational news rather than to beautiful women. The implication behind a "bombshell report" or a "bombshell study" is simple -- the information contained in either is bound to rattle people to their cores and perhaps even get them to reconsider their previously-held convictions and beliefs.

Alternative media sources have been dropping bombshells all over the internet since the 2020 global totalitarian coup, but nothing has managed to rattle the masses. This leads me to believe that the masses are largely immune to non-System-endorsed bombshells and only respond to the sorts of bombshells the System endorses and promotes via its usual mainstream channels.

System-endorsed bombshells include the litmus tests -- the birdemic, the peck, the racial agitation movements, the trans agenda, etc. -- and any other external event or news that can be elevated to the status of "the current thing."

Non-system-endorsed bombshells -- such as independent medical studies revealing unpleasant data about the peck -- have no real bombshell effect because they rarely attract the masses and, thereby, rarely manage to shock them. On the contrary, nearly all end up being duds at the mass level.

This reveals much about what we can expect from bombshell reports, stories, and studies going forward. Anything the System controls will hit with great impact. Whatever the System does not control will have little, if any, impact at all.

This holds especially true at the level of personal experience. Those who rely on the System for bombshells will deny whatever sudden, unexpected, shocking event or information they experience firsthand. They will not allow anything to challenge previously-held convictions or beliefs.

Those who are surprised and shocked by sudden, unexpected events they experience at the personal level may drop previously-held beliefs and begin ranting and railing against some aspect of the System, but very little of this ranting and railing will expand the force of the non-System-endorsed, personally-experienced bombshell.

Thus, the non-System-endorsed bombshells will continue to explode. They will explode through the "the bombshell reports" released through non-System endorsed sources, and they will explode at the level of personal experience as people face sudden, unexpected, and unpleasant events and news. Yet none of these explosions will make the slightest bit of difference to the masses unless they are "picked up" and magnified by the System itself.

This makes me think there are some lessons to be learned when it comes to post-2020 bombshells:

The only “real” bombshells have been System-endorsed bombshells. Only the System has the power to rattle people to their cores at the mass level.
Non-System-endorsed bombshells have been and will continue to land as duds at the mass level unless the System decides to promulgate them as its own bombshells.
Non-System-endorsed bombshells should not shock or surprise us if we have been using intuitive and spiritual discernment since 2020.
Bombshells experienced at the personal level should be approached as opportunities for spiritual learning, regardless of whether or not they are connected to the 2020 global totalitarian coup.
To sum up, much can be learned by overcoming the allure and power of bombshells in this time and place.

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Support New World Island

4/23/2022

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The New World Island blog aggregator that features the circle of Romantic Christian bloggers with whom I am proud and honored to be affiliated has recently posted an audio version of Dr. Charlton's book: Lazarus Writes: Reading the Fourth Gospel in Isolation.

Why not check it out?

New World Island also features a monthly discussion thread that offers the opportunity to connect with other like-minded individuals and discuss/develop the themes/ideas that appear on the various blogs.

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Christianity: Skin-Thinking Versus Heart-Thinking

4/23/2022

6 Comments

So, Rod Dreher has decided to get a Christian tattoo and has offered the following explanation for his decision:

"I found that I wanted somehow to feel in my skin, for all the days left of my life, the truth that JESUS CHRIST CONQUERS."

Here is the tattoo:

Like his tattoo, everything about Dreher and his faith is on the surface, superficial, showy, and external. He wants to "somehow" feel Christ on his skin but doesn't seem interested in feeling Christ in his heart.

Instead of heart-thinking (to borrow Dr. Charlton's term adapted from Steiner), Dreher is quite content to remain in the mode of "skin-thinking".

And practically everything about Dreher reflects this mode of skin-thinking -- from his panicked, hysterical response to the birdemic to his endorsement of the Hungarian prime minister as a bastion of Christian conservatism (despite the latter implementing the same draconian, oppressive birdemic measures and peck regime implemented the world over).

Symbols are never reality, and they only mean something if they reflect a deeper reality.

This is particularly true of Christian symbols.

I wish Dreher the best of luck.

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No One Held a Peck to Your Head

4/20/2022

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Never forget that you are dealing with spiritual wickedness that glories in deception and despair. They will tell you that you have no choice, then blame you for making the very choice they made you feel you didn't have. It's the coercion that is the clue.

Vox Day recorded the observation above on his blog today in response to a clip of the Australian PM insisting that pecks are a personal choice; hence, people who allowed themselves to be pecked did so of their own free will and must, therefore, assume total personal responsibility for the choice they made. Here's the clip:

You see, it's all about making an "informed decision" leading to "informed consent." The lockdowns, threats, coercion, degradation, stigmatization, incessant media fear campaigns, humiliation, denial of inalienable rights, curtailments, lies, deceptions, manipulations, job losses, denial of services had nothing whatsoever to do with any person's ability and right to make that informed decision.

There's no mandate, see? Only rules and the rules apply to everybody:

What if you suffered side effects? Reactions? Death? Hey, the choice to "follow the rules" was all yours. People like this demon-serving individual had nothing to do with it.

As I have noted before, the matter of choice regarding the peck is primarily a spiritual matter:

Getting people to willingly and actively choose their damnation has been the dominant theme of the birdemic since 2020.

Yes, there has been much persuasion, propaganda, and pressure -- and yes, there have been manipulations and machinations aplenty.

Terror tactics? Sure.

Bold-faced lying and devious dishonesty? Certainly.

Coercion? Oppression? Harassment? Arm-twisting? You betcha!

What about straight-up force?

Though there has been some compulsion here and there, evil has generally avoided the blatant use of force whenever possible for the simple reason that it wants to ensure the choice is yours.

Evil has generally left some room for choice, even when it has mandated and compelled. Granted, the choices it tends to offer barely seem like choices at all -- penalties, fines, job-loss, etc. -- but they are choices all the same.

Because they don't want to make the choice for people. They really don't. They want people to make the choice themselves. And they want people to own that choice.

To get back to Vox Day for a moment -- he has consistently been among the (very) few bloggers who recognize and understand the spiritual implications of the peck agenda and the birdemic. Kudos to him for that.

Note added: Choices can be repented, especially choices made under coercion, but I imagine evil is banking on a majority of such choices remaining un-repented. Even better, such coerced choices could become a fertile breeding ground for resentment, rage, and despair.

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An Example of Spiritual Freedom

4/18/2022

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Spiritual freedom is a recurring theme on this blog. On the one hand, this sort of freedom should be easy to understand and "live". On the other hand, it appears most people struggle to define spiritual freedom and have -- at best -- a tenuous grasp of what it is and what it entails.

I was browsing You Tube earlier today, and I happened to stumble upon a scene from Risen, a recent fictional film set at the time of Jesus's crucifixion. I haven't watched the film, so I can't attest to its quality. Nevertheless, the few scenes I have seen were quite engaging, particularly the one below, which I believe provides a vivid portrayal of what spiritual freedom looks like.

The scene takes place shortly after Jesus's death, which the Roman Tribune, Clavius -- played by Joseph Fiennes -- witnessed in person. After the tomb Jesus had been placed in is discovered to be empty, Pontius Pilate orders Clavius to make the rounds and find the body. One of Clavius's interrogations involves Mary Magdelene.

Note the way Mary responds to the manipulations, coercions, and threats Clavius issues as a representative of the external authority that wields every imaginable worldly power over Mary.

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Easter Sunday Procession in a Small Hungarian Village

4/17/2022

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The Easter Sunday Procession is an annual tradition in the small village I call home.

A Blessed Easter to all. He is risen!

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The Crucifixion of Jesus is an Historical Fact; The Rest Depends on Us

4/15/2022

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“I don’t get it. A man was tortured, brutalized, and executed in one of the most excruciating ways imaginable. How could any of that possibly be good?”

An atheist acquaintance of mine once shared this opinion of Good Friday with me. I wanted to respond by pointing out that the “good” in Good Friday had more to do with holy than good, but I resisted the temptation. My acquaintance had his own beliefs about what constituted good, and I am certain he did not care much for the concept of holy.

The word excruciating was very fitting though. It comes from the Latin crux, meaning cross. Not many people know that.

My acquaintance did not understand Good Friday and showed no interest in wanting to understand Good Friday, but in his defense, he did not deny the reality of Jesus’s crucifixion as an event in history.

In other words, he accepted that a man named Jesus had lived and died on earth two thousand years ago, but he refused to believe that Jesus rose from the dead three days after crucifixion. For him, the crucifixion represented cruel death and nothing more. Full stop. The end.

My atheist acquaintance is representative of most modern people for whom “good” exists in only in life. Thus, the ultimate goal is the pursuit of the “good life.” However, life is also filled with a great deal of “bad”. Hence, the modern mindset defines living a good life as embracing everything “good” in life – pleasure, success, health, happiness, etc. – while simultaneously avoiding the “bad” – pain, failure, illness, sadness, etc.

The “good life” also entails not thinking much about death, which the modern mind conceives as the ultimate evil of pointless negation. As such, death is removed from life altogether and placed in a category of its own – let’s call it “not life” or “anti-life.”

The modern, atheistic conceptualization of life and death renders the “good” of Good Friday ungraspable and incomprehensible. The deeper spiritual implications of the historical event are too strange to contemplate, let alone understand. Best not even bother and focus instead on the “good life” while one is still alive to enjoy it.

The strangeness of Christianity is rooted in Jesus’s mission, which involves demonstrating the reality of a Good Life that is infinitely superior to any “good life” men can hope to secure in this world. In a post from 2019, Dr. Charlton addressed this inherent strangeness of the Good Life Jesus offers:

What, then, did this man Jesus say about himself and what he brought?

That he brought, he made possible, an altogether higher, better, permanently-satisfying way of living. So, this good life Jesus gave would be not just greater than anything we had or could ever experience; it would be ever-lasting, it would be eternal.

Further; this good life would be experienced in our bodies, we would life forever and satisfyingly as embodied men; in bodies that would could not be destroyed. How extraordinary!

But - and Jesus was clear about this - we could reach this state of the Good Life (Jesus himself could only reach this state) only by first dying and then 'resurrecting'. The Good Life Jesus promised was on the other side of death!

And Jesus himself would 'show' that what he claimed was true, and how it worked; first by 'demonstrating' the process on his friend Lazarus; and then by himself going-through this same death and resurrection. How strange!

Why must Men die in order to be remade for the Good Life? Jesus did not explain. It seemed to be something to do with the fact that mortal bodies were intrinsically corruptible; and to 'make' eternal bodies required this process of 'resurrection'.

But why did Men need to live the Good Life in bodies? Why not as spirits? That was perhaps the strangest thing of all. Again; Jesus did not explain, but the fact seemed to be quite definite.

This is “good” my atheist acquaintance could not grasp. Even though he knew he would one day die himself, he could not accept the idea that there was anything “good” beyond death, let alone accept that the “good” beyond death was infinitely superior to any “good” he hoped to find his mortal life. He had made his choice in this regard – and understanding the “good” in Good Friday is exactly that – a choice. Dr. Charlton explains:

What Jesus did explain, was that if we wanted this Good Life for ourselves, we needed in some sense to follow him. And that this following was a matter of love; the Good Life was itself a thing of love, the GL was joined by loving.

The Good Life was made possible by Jesus's love for each and every Man; and the 'process' was completed by each Man who wanted this Good Life loving Jesus. It had to be our decision, each individual's decision.

This business was not something done by God, to Men - or for Men. This step was a thing that we needed to do for our-selves; there were two sides, and we each must participate in the process - God's side of the matter being accomplished by a Holy Spirit or Comforter, which Jesus would send after he himself left the mortal world. Jesus implied that this Holy Ghost was in some sense himself, returned, in a form who was accessible to any Man who wanted it.

And that was it, pretty much! That was the essence of the thing. Having made this clear, Jesus went ahead and did it; he completed the process.

. . . The Good Life was from now a permanent possibility for any Man; albeit only attainable on the other side of death and by the choice of love.

Atheists are not the only ones that struggle with strangeness of Christianity and the “good” of Good Friday. For many Christians, the crucifixion of Jesus centers on atonement, redemption, and the cleansing of sin. On Good Friday, Jesus fulfills his mission as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Christians the world over somberly reflect upon how Jesus died for our sins.

But what does this actually mean?

Dr. Charlton provides some penetrating insights on the matter as it pertains to the Fourth Gospel:

A man emerges, Jesus - who is instantly recognised, on sight, by John the Baptist as being the Messiah: the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. When John baptises him, John perceives that the Spirit of God does not only touch and depart, as usual; but uniquely stays with this man: Jesus has become divine.

What does it mean that Jesus would 'take away' sin? Sin seems to mean all the transitory nature of satisfaction in this world, the corruptions, the selfishness, that which contributes to the recurrent sense that life is travail and loss. Jesus will take away Mortality and all its badness, all that we know in our hearts to be intrinsically wrong about life.

Inspired by Dr. Charlton’s observations, William James Tychonievich offers a fresh interpretation of Jesus’s role as the Lamb of God as it pertains to Good Friday and the historical event of Jesus’s crucifixion:

The standard interpretation is that John is alluding to the sacrificial rites of the Old Testament -- particularly the "sin-offerings" detailed in Leviticus 4, in which animals were ritually slaughtered in order to obtain forgiveness for sins. Jesus, then, would be the ultimate sacrificial animal, and when the Romans executed him they were unwittingly playing the role of the Levitical priest who slits the victim's throat, sprinkles its blood about, and burns its fat and some of its internal organs on the altar, somehow effecting thereby the forgiveness of sins. On this view, the crucifixion of Christ was not merely an execution, nor even a martyrdom, but an act of ritual human sacrifice to appease the wrath of God. (Fortunately the Roman soldiers were not aware that they were participating in such a monstrous ritual. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.")

John, then, was saying, "Behold the sacrificial victim of God, whose death will bring about the forgiveness of all the sins committed in the world."

This interpretation of John is, I think, unacceptable. It makes no logical or moral sense to say that God's forgiveness can be obtained through blood sacrifice, whether animal or human -- or that a blood sacrifice "counts" when the victim only stays dead for a single weekend -- or that the greatest and most effective sacrificial ritual should be performed not by God's consecrated priests, but by the soldiers of a brutal pagan empire who didn't even realize that what they were doing had any religious significance. Suppose Genghis Khan sacked a village, killed all the livestock, and burned the place to the ground. Could we expect anyone's sins to be forgiven as a result of such an incident, on the grounds that it constituted an unwitting sin-offering? But we might as well believe that as that the blackguards and barbarians who put Christ to death were unknowingly officiating in the greatest priestly ritual of all time.

Any acceptable reading of John's words must do better than this.

I had never before considered that "the sin of the world" might mean anything other than "all the moral vices and crimes of which the people of the world are guilty," so Bruce's fresh perspective is very valuable. I think it's a very defensible reading, especially considering that John says "the sin [singular] of the world" rather than, say, "the sins of the people." A strictly literal translation of the Greek would be something like "the way in which the cosmos misses its mark" -- an apt enough description of "mortality and all its badness."

Taking away mortality and all its badness also sounds like something that Jesus could conceivably do -- a tremendous miracle, but a logically admissible one -- whereas taking away the moral shortcomings of all the people in the world does not. If I am sinful, how could anything anyone else can do, even in principle, change that fact? At best, the punishment of sins could be taken away, which is all that the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament religion were supposed to do.

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Which brings us back to John's problematic declaration. Even if we reconceptualize "taking away the sin of the world," we are still stuck with his sacrificial-animal metaphor. In what logically and morally acceptable sense can Jesus be considered the equivalent of a sacrificial victim?

Something I discovered when preparing my notes on John 1 is that male lambs -- the animals indicated by John's Greek -- were never in fact used as sin offerings.

According to the regulations laid out in Leviticus 4 for sin offerings (presumably what is being alluded to), a bullock is offered if a priest or the whole congregation has sinned; a male kid if the ruler has sinned; and a female kid or lamb if a commoner has sinned. In no case is a male lamb offered as a sin offering, and even a female lamb seems to be a sort of second option if a kid is not available. Why then did John choose a lamb? Why did he not call Jesus the Bullock of God (the closest fit for taking away the sins of the world) or the Kid of God?

In that post I merely raised the question without attempting to answer it. I think now that the answer is that, despite the bit about "taking away the sin of the world," John was not alluding to sin offerings. Instead he was (obviously!) alluding to a different sacrificial ritual -- the one that all the Gospels associate most closely with Jesus' death -- namely, the Passover (Exodus 12). The Passover victim, unlike that for a sin-offering, was a male lamb. And the blood of the Paschal lamb was shed, not to obtain forgiveness for moral misdeeds or for infractions of the Mosaic law, but to cause the destroyer to pass over. The fate of the Egyptians -- "there was not a house where there was not one dead" -- is the fate of everyone in this broken world, but the Passover made it possible to escape that fate -- to be passed over by the destroying angel, and to be delivered from that death-cursed land into a better country. This is a much better metaphor for what Jesus did than are the sin-offerings of Leviticus.

On the one hand, Good Friday commemorates a strange event that occurred in history. An innocent man was executed on false charges in the most barbaric of ways.

On the other hand, Good Friday also marks the transformation of Creation. Jesus’s death and subsequent resurrection is a spiritual cosmic shift that penetrates every aspect of reality.

The crucifixion of Jesus happened. Good Friday is a testament to that. The rest depends on us – quite literally.

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Not Heavy or Overwhelming Anymore

4/14/2022

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I used to let the world weigh on me on quite a bit in the past. I often worried about the decline of civilization, the splintering of society, the dissolution of decency, the erosion of goodness, and all the rest of it.

I still think about these things now -- and blog about them quite a bit -- but none of it feels as heavy and overwhelming as it had in the past.

The 2020 global totalitarian coup has had a great deal to do with it. Once I recognized the coup for what it truly is, I came to the startling realization that things that had burdened me before the coup -- things like culture and social life -- are no longer symbolic of basic spiritual realities. Why? For the simple reason that the vast majority of the "stuff" in culture and social life has been disconnected from spiritual reality.

The objects within culture and society have ceased to be anchored in anything personal and subjective; hence, they have no relationship to truth or reality because truth and reality exist only in the personal and subjective.

Society and culture have fused into a "given" world that has been severed from the "created" world.

The "objects" within culture and society could never realize the primary reality of spirit, but they were able to symbolize them to a greater or lesser degree if the people within culture and society were aligned with spiritual realities. The "objects" could not produce reality, but they could serve as signs of reality.

The "objects" within today's culture and society are engineered to deny the primary reality of the spirit. Rather than symbolize the reality of the spirit, today's culture and society symbolize nothing but opposition to God and Creation.

The "objects" within the post-2020 world cannot produce reality, nor can they serve as signs of reality. The "objects" in today's culture and society are just objects, symbolizing nothing -- or, more precisely, symbolizing non-being.

Once I realized that post-2020 culture and society had ceased being symbolic in the "true, beautiful, and good" sense" of the word, they ceased feeling heavy and overwhelming. In fact, they ceased feeling like anything much at all.

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