"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Northeast Portico
“A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”
Czesław Miłosz
"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to beware of those who cause arguments and put obstacles in your way with things that are contrary to the teachings you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord, but their own vain appetites and inclinations. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people."
Romans 16:17-18
Stocks set new highs, and gold and silver corrected a bit on a quiet Comex option expiration. The charts continue to exhibit interesting patterns and excesses.
The economic news of The Recovery™ meanders along its mediocre path, with a rise in long term unemployment and the sluggish growth in the broader economy driven by an exhausted middle class and staggering working poor.
Several fellows sought to engage me in conversation yesterday, challenging the observation that 23 million people will be denied affordable access to healthcare for themselves and their families by this abomination that has slouched out of our House of Representatives.
Their points, while differently expressed, were that since these unfortunates do not have such access to reliable and affordable healthcare now, it is no great loss for them. It is as if this is the result of the natural order, and not of a damnable system of apportioning out the wealth of the country, its products, and its benefits in a corrupt and distorted manner that is without equity, compassion or mercy.And therefore it is implied that the fate of the weak, the elderly, the children and the disabled is deserved, because they are not life fully worthy of life. If they were then they would be rising up in the world on its own terms through their innovation and diligent power as do the exceptional and the elect of this world and its favored few.
We all seem to be gifted with a rare talent for knowing the right things to do, and yet rationalizing exceptions to those principles for ourselves, not of any real necessity when you get right down to it, but for our convenience. And we have a remarkable talent for broadly blinding ourselves to the nature and consequences of our own actions.
We are truly masters of deflection and self-deception. We see our elite boldly standing on their vain pedestals of patriotic righteousness and credentialed authority. And can we not help but think that we have learned nothing, both from history and from the words of the prophets.
If our Lord came back, not as we expect in glory as the Son of Man, but as a humble lamb of innocent perfection, there should be little doubt that we would stand by while those from the established power structure would crucify Him again.
And this certainly is not because He would deserve it, not in the least. Although there can be no doubt that we would hear some fine sounding reasons for it.
It is because by His very nature He is truth, and is therefore inconvenient to the established order of worldly powers, and the gods of the market that seek to measure the value of all in their twisted scales. His casting of a light is the greatest offense of all to the lords of the darkness of this world.
In their own minds they might even see themselves as serving the order of God, or at least the god that they have erected themselves, and chosen to honor and obey. And yet they do, if not in the rigorous sense, but in all practicality damn themselves in their selfishness and pride, and blind themselves to it.
Most cannot even imagine such a judgement as applying in their own case. We may think that there is no higher power than themselves and, if there is, that it is some immanent and disinterested source of power that is there for us to use, as in every other case, for our own ends.
After all, the elite have been able to use their words and their cunning wit to rise to such positions of power, and maintain on so many other occasions, that surely they will not fail them in their final reckoning. Even God Himself could not find the ability to best them in their arguments and authority.
But the simple truth of the matter is this— they will not serve any other but themselves. Non serviam.
Surely those striving for power and rule over the well-being of others have taken on a higher obligation for justice by.
But before we cast judgement on others, we must look at ourselves, and in our own hands see the lash of vanity and the hammer of greed. We too are wielding them against our brothers and sisters, the least of these, at the very foot of His cross. Hypocrites and sinners, are we all.
And yet hope and forgiveness is there, if we will but take it, and cast off our blindness and see.
Forget now and go on, and do not thank or acknowledge His truth in any way, or take any obligation or restraint for ourselves that we do not willingly place there, at our pleasure, convenience, and discretion.
We will decide what is enough for Him. For this is what we do, every day, in our foolish blindness.
May God have mercy and forgive us, especially in that moment when we will finally see ourselves as we really are, stripped of all worldly ornaments and illusions, and then know what we have done, and what we have failed to do, with perfect clarity.
Have a pleasant evening.
