Francis Berger
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Masking the Divine

12/26/2020

8 Comments

 
Back in April I suggested the face mask would become the lasting symbol of the birdemic global totalitarian takeover. Though face masking was still voluntary in most places around the world at that time, I was concerned the practice would eventually become mandatory in the same manner social distancing and lockdown measures had become mandatory. While the latter two measures have triggered well-justified unease in some segments of the general population, the former has been mostly regarded as a minor and pointless inconvenience. Yes, many have very astutely pointed out that face-masking is an infringement of personal rights and freedoms, but only a handful of people appear to be aware of the deeper spiritual implications behind the masking mandates. 

In my April post I proposed coerced face masking contained an intentionally and intrinsically dehumanizing element: 


There is something inherently dehumanizing about masking the human face. A crucial channel of communication and existence is denied when the human face is hidden. True, eyes are the windows to souls, but faces are windows to human personality. 

I then went on to equate the masking of the human face with the masking of God. Though the notion struck me as somewhat histrionic at the time, I felt the need to communicate it all the same. Since then I have come to understand that - far from being exaggerated or stilted - my intuitive assumptions about the pernicious implications of face masking strike at the very core of the current spiritual onslaught that has been unleashed upon us. Face masking is certainly an attack on individual rights and freedoms, but many fail to see that it has also morphed into a direct and prolonged siege against the Divine - that the prime objective of masking the human face is the total removal of God from the public sphere. 

Of course, this only makes sense if one considers the human face to be conduit of the Divine - as a potent spiritual force through which the Divine continuously communicates - rather than simply a material component of the human anatomy. One thinker who recognized the divine implication of the human face was Nikolai Berdyaev, who noted the following in his Slavery and Freedom:


The face of man is the summit of the cosmic process, the greatest of its offspring, but it cannot be the offspring of cosmic forces only, it presupposes the action of a spiritual force, which raises it above the sphere of the forces of nature. The face of man is the most amazing thing in the life of the world: another world shines out through it. It is the entrance of personality into the world process, with its uniqueness, its singleness, it unrepeatability. Through the face we apprehend, not the bodily life of man, but the life of his soul. 

This "action of a spiritual force", this "other world" that shines through the face of man, this "entry of the personality into the world process" are exactly what mandatory face masking conspires to obscure and deny.

Even worse, masking has inimically inverted the very sight of an unmasked face in public. Rather than perceiving the life of a soul in the human face, many now regard the sight of the mask-less human face with trepidation and terror. The unmasked face is now viewed as source of potential harm and danger. Many go out of their way to avoid encountering it all costs, and in situations where they are forced to confront it, they react to it with fear and scorn. Nowhere is this more true than within the walls of Christian churches, where the very act of mandating face masking during services borders on outright blasphemy.

Berdyaev once noted that the elimination of the perception of God in the world would signify the end of the human being on earth. I propose the reverse holds true as well.
8 Comments
Христина
12/26/2020 11:23:25

At one point, I realized why masks seemed so disturbing. I remember in 2019, the movie Birdbox caused some buzz around social media. One of the most ominous premises was that people had to move with a blindfold on at all times, to avoid certain death. While a blindfold and a mask are not exactly equivalent, in this case, I think they rhyme strongly. Especially with the premise that wearing a mask is a shield from certain death and removing the mask exposes people to invisible forces.

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Francis Berger
12/26/2020 12:55:11

@Христина - Thanks for the comment. I hadn't heard of the movie Birdbox before, but the title itself is strangely similar to the "birdemic" monicker bloggers like me have attached to our current circumstances. Of course, the original Birdemic is a horrible "B" movie. Birdbox appears to be in a different category. I'll be sure to check it out.

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Michelle
12/26/2020 12:41:14

Welcome back!
My argument to my priest back in April was this- how do I teach my 3 year old son to love his neighbor when he can't even see his neighbor's face? He said the mask was a temporary inconvenience, and I said if you accept masking as truth, then you will be masking yourself forever.
Everything has become an abstraction or an outright lie. Everything has become fake. Fake love, fake church, fake democracy, fake crowds at fake sporting events with fake crowd cheers, fake empathy, fake schooling, fake science. The only real thing is the evil that has devoured the whole planet, but that reality is unknown to most and rarely acknowledged.
I moved with great haste two months ago from my birthplace where my entire family lives to a place where I've never been and where I know no one.
Things are much better- at least for now. I found a new church where I stood shoulder to shoulder with 500 other unmasked people to hear a sermon about how universal masking is evil and the work of satan. Not only did everyone live, but those same people came back the next week.
There is sanity out there. I fully expect this freedom to be quickly squashed at any moment but for right now I feel like God has given me this reprieve.

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Francis Berger
12/26/2020 12:56:43

@ Michelle - I am happy to hear about the reprieve you have described. It gives me hope.

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William Wildblood
12/26/2020 13:07:15

Masking is evil and that's all there is to it. I went to church yesterday (Christmas Day) and wore a mask so as not to embarrass my family. I felt ashamed and degraded. I won't be doing that again. In his sermon the priest spoke (with reference to Herod) about how evil tries to curtail freedom and crush the spirit but without any sense that he was describing exactly what was going on in the world at the present time. The irony! We did take communion but had to sanitise our hands first as though the host was somehow dirty. The symbolism was unmistakeable. Evil is leaving nothing out at the moment.

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Ingemar
12/26/2020 16:11:36

I visited my family. My mother, though tolerant of my bare face in private, repeatedly insisted that I wear a mask. Other than a token, half-hearted effort in the beginning, I ignored the request for most of the day.

I don't know/am not sure that I made my other relatives uncomfortable... They certainly didn't ask me to cover up. Either they were being polite or they were relieved to see a friendly face. At any rate, they conversed with me like I wasn't a leper.

I think a little refusal to accept the abnormal as normal goes a long way.

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Jay Fink
12/28/2020 13:27:59

My city was a Birdemic hotspot and there was a huge mask campaign. Everywhere you went you saw signs that said "Mask up to open up". Everyone complied. I can't remember the last time I saw anyone without a mask. Here it is several months later and our Birdemic numbers are supposedly spiking through the roof. All that mask wearing and nothing good came out of it.

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Francis Berger
12/28/2020 14:08:01

@ JF - Yes, this appears to be the norm in every place masks were mandated. Mask up because science! Masks did nothing to make the situation better. Lockdown and social distance because science! LDs and SDs did nothing to make the situation better. So what's the offered solution now? Vax up because science!

And during this whole time barely anyone has noticed that we have been subjected to a prolonged and sustained spiritual siege.

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