Thomas
Brooks has an important chapter about sin masquerading as virtue, and
that stimulates some deeper philosophical thinking about what sin is,
what original sin was comprised of, how its correction was
implemented and how sin appears to be for human beings as an
existential encounter.
As
an entry to that consideration one might inquire if all sin appears
to be a pleasure. If in fact all sin seems to be a pleasure and if
human beings generally pursue pleasure then it seems understandable
that many people would do away with discrimination between different
kinds of objects or activities of pleasure where some are considered
good and some are regarded as evil. Do human beings ever do anything
for-themselves they regard as evil, or isn't it instead always
something thought to be good (even if one suicides to make a 'better'
circumstance?
Socrates
pursued virtue and would have had no trouble in saying that a man
should pursue virtue instead of pleasure. If pleasure coincides with
virtue well-enough, yet if a pleasure is in conflict with virtue
choose virtue. Classical virtue may have a realm-of-forms and
neo-Platonic foundation, and that is not worldly. It's theoretical,
abstract and disregards pleasure when it must to the point of
favorable comparison with the illusory regard in which material
reality is held as maya or moksha by Hindu and Buddhists. Sakyamuni
as a philosopher held reality to be illusory with nothing following
life. His way of thinking was comparable to contemporary physical
cosmology regarding the cosmos as a phenomenal steady-state of
entangled particle-waves arising from virtual energy in a
spatial-field with no permanent meaning or existence beyond the
temporal.
The
pursuit of pleasure rather than enlightenment of virtue or cosmology
is for classical philosophers including Buddha an abnegation of man's
higher calling to transcend material being and understand reality and
mankind's place in it. Socrates felt that man's place in the Universe
was a stage on life's way as a fractional element of the divine
spirit existing in a protocol level of the Universe-project by The
Intelligence (comparable to the Holy Spirit). Buddha thought nothing
existed beyond or followed the temporal phenomenon. Christian virtue
is different than either, and yet has similarities and differences to
numerous to mention here.
Christian
virtues are ontological duties following the will of God being.
Christians resist sin keeping focused on the revealed will of God for
human living. It has been compared to being a soldier on a mission
eschewing worldly pleasures and disregarding pains and privations in
order to complete the mission, or as Paul said, to win the race and
the prize of eternal life with the Lord. The Christian life is
definitely not one of simple pursuit of pleasure except that the
highest good-God and salvation for a Christian-is also the greatest
pleasure. It is not a material pleasure though.
Here
one discerns the problems of what the good is, and of the inability
of humans to do anything besides choose what they think is good and
not evil for-themselves. Logically and rationally none could
paradoxically Paul said that none are good-no not one, and Jesus
paradoxically asked 'why dost thou call me good, none are good save
the Father in heaven'.
Original
sin's correction or containment was for Adam and Eve to be downloaded
into temporal space-time from some sort of Paradise without it. For
the spirit to be inextricably bound in flesh with all of its temporal
thermodynamic urges and requirements is to experience sin and the
biological drive for pleasure. Pleasure is a primitive sense
experience of what works for the good of an organism. Maybe an amoeba
feels some pleasure as it devours some micro-organism. Scientists
like to say that life is just getting more energy input, yet I think
that nearly all organic life must be pursuing that with pleasure as
the motivator reinforcing behavior. For human beings to have
spiritual awareness though they must think at a higher level and move
beyond physical pleasure to philosophy and spirit. Wisdom is of God,
and leads one to spirit and God, and that is good.
When
God created the Universe after each day or phase of creation He said
that it was good. Mass-energy for itself that God formed the Universe
of is good, yet when human experience of the temporal Universe has
their spirit implicitly entangled in and formed in mass-energy it is
challenging to contemplate spiritual affairs or to know what that
might be. The philosopher David Hume was an anti-sophist in effect
urging people to cast into the flames books with metaphysics. Hume
regarded metaphysics as nonsense. Modern anti-Christians and atheist
therefore like David Hume a lot since anything spiritual seems to be
metaphysical non-sense for the just-worldly. What
is wisdom to man is foolishness to God.
Today's
cultured despiser of religion- often atheists with a sensible organic
self-limitation-despise the concept of sin. Sin is more than simply
a discrimination against pleasure. Sin is not limited to existential
temptation to-oneself; sin can occur in a dialectical paradigm
wherein what is pleasure for one is harmful to another.
Sin
is a meta-social delimitation marker for right conduct too. To avoid
sin has social consequences for the good, while choosing to sin often
has bad social consequences. An easy example is murder; the Joker
might enjoy murder-art yet his victims not at all. Adolph Hitler
probably thought he was pursuing good and pleasure, yet 50 million
people died as a consequence and hundreds of millions more were
wounded or displaced. Sin is a socially transmitted disease like
herpes or H.I.V.-it goes around and comes around; the spiritually
discerning soul eschews it.
Sartre's
'Being and Nothingness' is tome of first-person description of
conscious experience. Nothing is expressed on sin or of ontology in
the book. It is a technical -analytical description of the phenomena
of mind. His sequel 'The Critique of Dialectical Reason' describes
how people interact socially from an existential point of view. One
could use 'The Critique' as a template for how sin-particular and
general-circulate quite readily. Of course there are meta-Diabolic
elements at work besides we are informed in the Bible. One discerns
a large social awareness disconformity between sin as an existential
pleasure phenomenality and sin as a dialectical social currency with
grave consequences.
Just
being in the material world as a part of it without thought at all
would make cabbages if the human race. Rational thought is
fundamental for human beings. Spirit is greater than and the
foundation of the material. Christians have that as an article of
faith and so did classical virtue. Thus one returns returns to
Brook's 'Remedies Against Satan's Devices'; sin is the organic form
of pursuit of pleasure only-a regression to full amoeba-hood morally,
with disastrous consequences for the human spirit, and the hope of
the human spirit for reconciliation unto God through the atoning
sacrifice of the Son.
Brooks
wrote the following on page 22-23;"Remedy (4). Seriously to
consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and. Seriously
to consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and
puts new names and colors
upon, cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood,
the heart-blood of the
Lord Jesus. That Christ should come from the eternal bosom of
his Father to a region of
sorrow and death; that God should be manifested in the flesh,
the Creator made a
creature; that he who was clothed with glory should be wrapped with
rags of flesh; he who filled heaven and earth with his glory should
be cradled in a manger;
that the almighty God should flee from weak man—the God of Israel
into Egypt;
that the God of the law should be subject to the law, the God of the
circumcision circumcised,
the God who made the heavens working at Joseph's homely trade; that
he who
binds the devils in chains should be tempted; that he, whose is the
world, and the fullness
thereof, should hunger and thirst; that the God of strength should be
weary, the
Judge of all flesh condemned, the God of life put to death; that he
who is one with his
Father should cry out of misery, "My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?" (Matt.
27:46); that he who had the keys of hell and death at his belt should
lie imprisoned in the sepulcher of another, having in his lifetime
nowhere to lay his head, nor after death to lay his body; that that
HEAD, before which the angels do cast down their crowns, should be
crowned with thorns, and those EYES, purer than the sun, put out by
the darkness of death; those EARS, which hear nothing but hallelujahs
of saints and angels, to hear the blasphemies of the multitude; that
FACE, which was fairer than the sons of men, to be spit on by those
beastly wretched Jews; that MOUTH and TONGUE, which spoke as never
man spoke, accused for blasphemy; those HANDS, which freely swayed
the scepter of heaven, nailed to the cross; those FEET, "like
unto fine brass," nailed to the cross for man's sins; each sense
pained with a spear and nails; his SMELL, with stinking odor, being
crucified on Golgotha, the place of skulls; his TASTE, with vinegar
and gall; his HEARING, with reproaches, and SIGHT of his mother and
disciples bemoaning him; his SOUL, comfortless and forsaken; and all
this for those very sins that Satan paints and puts fine colors upon!
Oh! how should the consideration
of this stir up the soul
against sin, and work the soul to fly from it, and to use all holy
means whereby sin may be
subdued and destroyed!"
Brooks
commented on the way sin may approach gradually as is so evident
today in the American media where each advance of sin culturally is
explained as 'the new normal'. Sin has become a kind of partner of
science in the U.S.A. without scientific recognition of the diabolic
impact. Scientific progress is exploited as evidence to support the
eradication of moral criteria. A Universe without a divine presence
that is entirely measurable and manipulable by human action is
reinforced constantly. Nothing in science is capable of studying the
spiritual. In fact the spiritual cannot be defined in physical terms
although researchers have studied the brain with imaging technologies
during prayer to learn what regions might be used and what
biochemical responses could produce euphoric or tranquil states of
mind.
The
human mind does exist within a physical brain housing unit (skull)
and may consciously and subconsciously have a relationship with God.
The relationship is entirely of grace though-God provides all
communication required, all divine instructions given through
revelation. In physical terms of power the relationship is mono-polar
that like gravity flows in just one direction (toward the heart
matter in the case of gravity). Numerous physical means for God to
accomplish one-direction control of this Universe and of its social
issues are theoretically possible and appear to the thinking
individual rather easily. For instance the entire history of the
Universe could have been predetermined, or God could have the
allegorical 'tachyon' channel to subtly talk with select people. With
radio one hears an example of one-way communication. With a superior
spiritual communications and control 'technology' God can interrogate
and shape the mass-energy of the Universe in conformity with his own
choosing from among possibilities He made himself. That raises the
question of why God chooses anything or creates anything to choose
from. It also may bear indirectly on the subject of why evil exists
though God is perfect.
The
problem of exploiting science to support the reduction of moral
standard accountability to divine standards reminds me of when
cosmonauts orbiting earth in the early 1960s said they had visited
heaven, looked around and didn't see God anywhere-that was an almost
primitive misinterpretation of the Bible's use of the word 'heaven'.
To
be fair though evolution is a stumbling block for many fundamentalist
Christians who share the opinion of the Diabolic applications of
science crowd that evolution theory is in direct contradiction to the
Bible account of creation and actually, it is not. Dr. Science
quality quack creation pseudo-science harms Christian evangelical
missions work to save the lost. It isn't necessary for Christians to
disprove evolution in order to defend the point that God created the
Universe. God could have evolved 14 billion years in 14 seconds if he
had a will to-his mastery of matter and energy is beyond any human
comprehension. Popular education is based on evolution science and it
has a kind of self-evident truth about it that dogmatic, hierarchical
priesthoods without proper hermeneutic templates find impossibly
difficult to explain without quack science to contradict it directly.
Popular
movies with evolution themes saturate public imagination and they
offer fuel to the Diabolan fire to burn down the Christian mission.
The film 'Lucy' with a cute blond named Scarlet Johanson playing the
lead role is about evolution-with eponymous reference to the first
human-like ancestor skeleton found living around Lake Tanganyika 3.5
million years ago-a short Australopithecus female about 3.5 feet
tall. The star of the film 'Lucy' is a modern woman who, like that
3.5 million year old fossil excavated by Lewis Leakey's son Richard,
is named 'Lucy'.
The
second chapter of Genesis has Adam and Eve created outside space-time
in a place named Eden. They are then thrown out of Eden and into a
world that was created in stages-evolved-in chapter one. It is
possible to argue about the values of the time literals of chapter
one (e.g. how long is a day before light or stars were made), yet to
interpolate Bishop Usher's calculations into chapter one is a mistake
made by the Diabolic and the fundamentalist set-and the latter are
also wrong about interpreting the time and symbolic referent values
of the Revelation quite commonly (pre-tribbers have it wrong).
At
any rate Lucy accidentally ingests an illegal drug designed by the
Japanese Yakuza in enormous quantities that have the side effect of
making her brain use 100% instead of the normal 10%. Morgan Freeman
is a kind of scientific narrator explaining evolution's biological
history on Earth during the film. There are flashes of predator-prey
actions and comparisons to moderns in the same roles. Lucy will
evolve herself to the highest condition eventually in record time.
She evolves millions or billions of years ahead intellectually
speaking in a day or two with the magic smart drug. So therefore
logically she understands quantum mechanics itself and makes herself
into a quantum computer to reshape reality. That's a neat trick that
I have though God could do, yet one sees that it would be science and
immoral Diabolans that would have that divine kind of power in the
brave new world (a point not made in the movie 'Lucy').
Unknown
perhaps to the producers of Lucy- another skeleton was dug up a
couple of years ago 40 miles north of Lucy's burial site that is two
feet taller. It is a male named, I believe, Mr. Big who would have
towered over Lucy.
Mr.
Big was 5.5 feet tall and lived in the same time period 3.5 million
years ago. Mr. Big was probably the brains of the outfit and was the
same height as the average 19th century Brit. Maybe Brit brains
advanced in 3.5 million years somewhat since they invented fish and
chips whereas the Tanganikans probably ate fish sushi style, yet
'Sir' Elton John's moral reasoning has taken a turn Mr. Big might
have regarded as wrong.
There
are fewer murders in modern Britain than there were in the Middle
East of 10,000 B.C. when Jericho began to be settled. Mass war
capacity has increased with homosexuals on U-boats, Tridents or
whatever ready to push nuclear missile trigger-buttons in a kinder,
gentler way. High-tech Megadeath is so civilized. It takes a while to
build up, like catastrophe theory mathematics, while in the
interregnum from doom atheist organizations extol the love, peace and
humanhood of sin and faithlessness. The film starring Lucy should
have had Mr. Big playing the sadistic, chauvinist, little-better than
a chimpanzee-sort-of-guy named Caesar.
A
world with no religion too would lead to a Universe run by and for
Satan evidently-and that would be consistent with what is known about
the primary Lord of Looseness from reading scripture. On the other
hand, with enough Priesthood of Believers organizing maybe that is
the way a Christian majority will arise. A Christian majority using
ecological economic leadership (it is more than classical economic
abstract market management and includes an environmental 'hands on'
approach neither Luddite nor oppressively stagnant as a kind of
Egyptian, dynastic 'time-freeze' cultural stasis of conservation).
Thus
one notes why Hollywood and the Federal government has decreasing
trouble advancing morals that are not consistent with divine
standards. Especially in the same sex marriage issue, a history of
Hollywood and media , television and federal promotion of
homosexuality built to a crescendo this month with former athlete
Bruce Jenner's cover on Vanity Fare in a bikini as a castrated
makeover into a neo-woman. With 'Sir' Elton John leading the British
homosexual advance and with the Rhodes Scholar influence of Bill
Clinton the decline of U.S. moral norms was inevitable without an
active priesthood of believers existing as an ecclesiastical backbone
for the church.
Thomas
Brooks wrote on page 24 of 'Precious Remedies...'; "Sin gains
upon man's soul by insensible degrees. "The beginning of the
words of his mouth
is foolishness, and the end of his talking is mischievous madness."
(Eccles. 10:13)
Corruption in the heart, when it breaks forth, is like a breach in
the sea, which begins
in a narrow passage, until it eats through, and cast down all before
it. The debates
of the soul are quick, and soon ended; and that may be done in a
moment that may
undo a man forever. When a man has begun to sin, he knows not where,
or when, or
how he shall make a stop of sin. Usually the soul goes on from evil
to evil, from folly to
folly, until it is ripe for eternal misery!"
Brooks
explains that the Satanic device luring men to sin with examples of
famous sinners such as David or Peter who were still forgiven, in
order to trick the soul into believing that little (or large) sins
are forgivable and not to worry much about doesn't show the huge
repentance of those men to their one-time huge sin.
Brooks
page 31; "And therefore, though you may escape temporal
judgments,
yet you shall not escape spiritual judgments: 'How shall we escape,
if we
neglect
so great salvation?' (Heb. 2:3) says the apostle. Oh! therefore,
whenever Satan shall
present God to the soul as one made up all of mercy, that he may draw
you to do wickedly,
say unto him, that sins against God's mercy, will bring upon the soul
the
greatest
misery; and therefore whatever becomes of you, you will not sin
against
mercy."
Brooks
wrote on page 30 that;
"Remedy
(2). The second remedy against this device of Satan is, solemnly to
consider, That God is as JUST, as he is merciful. As the Scriptures
speak Him out to be a very merciful God, so they speak Him out to be
a very just God. Witness His casting the angels out of heaven and His
binding them in chains of darkness until the judgment of
great day.* Witness His
turning Adam out of Paradise. Witness His drowning of the
old world. Witness His
raining hell out of heaven upon Sodom. Witness all the troubles,
losses, sicknesses, and diseases, which are in the world. Witness
Tophet, which "has long been prepared; it has been made ready
for the king. Its fire pit has been made
deep and wide, with an
abundance of fire and wood; the breath of the LORD, like a
stream of burning sulfur,
sets it ablaze." (Isaiah 30:33) Witness His treasuring up of
wrath against the day of
wrath. But above all, witness the pouring forth of all His wrath
upon His bosom Son, when
Jesus bore the sins of His people, and cried out, "My God,
My God, why have You
forsaken Me?""
and
"The
third remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider,
That sins against God's mercy will bring the greatest and sorest
judgments upon men's heads
and hearts. Mercy is God's Alpha, justice is His Omega. David,
speaking of these
attributes, places mercy
in the forefront, and justice in the rearward, saying, "I will
sing of Your love and justice." (Psalm 101:1). When God's mercy
is despised, then His
justice takes the throne!*
God is like a prince, who sends not his army against rebels
before he has sent his
pardon, and proclaimed it by a herald of arms: he first hangs out
the white flag of mercy;
if this wins men in, they are happy forever; but if they remain
rebellious, then God will
put forth his red flag of justice and judgment. If His mercy is
despised, His justice
shall be felt!
The
higher we are in dignity, the more grievous is our fall and misery."
Brook's
'Remedies...' page 30-"Ah Lord! this mercy! humbly beg, that
whatever you give me up to, you will not give me
up
to the ways of my own heart; if you will give me up to be afflicted,
or tempted, or
reproached,
I will patiently sit down, and say, It is the Lord; let him do with
me what
seems
good in his own eyes. Do anything with me, lay what burden you will
upon me, so you do not give me up to the ways of my own heart.
Augustine says, 'It is a human thing to fall into sin, devilish to
persevere therein, and
divine
to rise from it. Deliver me, O Lord, from that evil man—myself!"
intellectual runts on global warming to most intelligent people. With last winter's Arctic ice pack setting a record at the smallest size since satellites began keeping records in 1979 they just sound dopey and provincial in opposing global warming. It is fine to take a stand on select issues for moral reasons, yet opposition to global warming countermeasures is usually done for short-term financial self-interests or ignorance. Republicans need to grow up and appear as if they don't keep their heads where the sun don't shine because it pays good.
