Searcing for God # 21

 In this space in the last post, the difference between philanthropy/good works, from discipleship in Christ was noted.

Tolstoy in, The Kingdom of God is Within You, writes, much more explicitly about this notion. At the end of the 19^th century, before the explosion of sociology, and before the work of Northrop Frye in The Educated Imagination, Tolstoy writes:

The faculty of foreseeing the path along which humanity must move, is common to a greater or less degree to all men. But in all times there have been men in which  his faculty was especially strong, and these men have given clear and definite expression to what all men felt vaguely, and formed a new philosophy of life from which new lines of action followed for hundreds and thousands of years.

Of such philosophies of life we know three: two have already been passed through by humanity, and the third is that we ae passing through now in Christianity. These philosophies of life are three in number, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily brought the various theories of life together under these three heads, but because all men’s actions are aways based on one of these three views of life—because we cannot live life otherwise than in these three ways.

These three views of life are as follows: First, embracing the individual, or the animal view of life; second embracing the society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole world, or the divine view of life.

In the first theory of life a man’s life is limited to his one individuality; the aim of life is the satisfaction of the will of this individuality. In the second theory of life a man’s life is limited not to his own individuality, but to certain societies and classes of individuals: to the tribe, the family, the class, the nation; the aim of life is limited to the satisfaction of the will of those associations of individuals. In the third theory of life a man’s life is limited not to societies and classes of individuals, but extends to the principle and source of life—to God. (Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 88)

And a little later, Tolstoy writes:

Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the parallelogram, of both eternal indestructible forces of which the life of man is compounded; the force of his animal nature and the fore of the consciousness of kinship to God…The true life, according to preceding religions, consists in carrying out rules, the law; according to Christ’s teaching it consists in an ever lose approximation to the divine perfection held up before every man, and recognized within himself by every man, in  an ever closer and closer approach to the perfect fusion of his will in the will of God, that fusion to which man strives, and the attainment of which would be the destruction of the life we know. The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be reached in infinity. (Tolstoy, op. cit. p. 98)

Asymptote: a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance. A straight line that constantly approaches a given curve but does not meet at any infinite distance. (a tangent)

The Russian writer continues:

Life, according to the Christian religion, is a progress toward the divine perfection. No one condition, according to this doctrine, can be higher or lower than another. Every condition, according to this doctrine, is only a particular stage, of no consequence in itself, on the way toward unattainably perfection and therefore in itself it does not imply a greater or lesser degree of life. Increase in life, according to this, consists in nothing but the quickening of the progress toward perfection. And therefore the progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus, of the woman that was a sinner, and of the robber on the cross, implies a higher degree of life than the stagnant righteousness of the Pharisee. And therefore for this religion there cannot be rules which are obligatory to obey. The man who is lower level but is moving onward toward perfection is living s more moral, a better life, is more fully carrying out Christ’s teaching, than the man on a much higher level of morality who is not moving onward toward perfection. It is in this sense that the lost sheep is dearer to the father than those that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money lost and found again, were more precious than those that were not lost. The fulfilment of Christ’s teaching consists in moving aware from self toward God. It is obvious that there cannot be definite laws and rules for this fulfillment of the teaching. (Tolstoy, op. cit. p. 100)

Let’s think back, for a moment, to the work of Gregory Baum, and his ‘privatizing of sin’ as opposed to the inclusion of both institutional and social/cultural sin…and the need for a more creative approach in which the church submits itself to a critical self-reflection. Many have been indoctrinated into a mind-set that sets forth specific acts which the church declares are considered sins, whether venal or mortal. And also let’s recall the Scott Peck book, The People of the Lie, in which the psychiatrist searched throughout the Pentagon for person who was responsible for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and found no one. Apparently the decision was taken by some group or groups, behind which ‘group’ cover every military officer claimed immunity and avoided both accountability and responsibility. In Christian teaching, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, have been rigorously and religiously taught as moral ‘do not’s to millions of children. Indeed, much of Western law follows the principles and precepts of those declarations. Tolstoy, however, posits a very different image of a path ‘toward’ not a path of judgement and inadequacy and inherent and inescapable evil as the starting place for a pilgrimage toward God.

Centering the Sermon on the Mount, as the cornerstone of his view of the Christian life, Tolstoy writes:

The Christian precepts (the commandment of love is not a precept in the strict sense of the word, but the expression of the very essence of the religion) are the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount---all negative in character. They show only what at a certain stage of development of humanity men may not do. The commandments are, as it were, signposts on the endless road to perfection, toward which humanity is moving, showing the point of perfection which is possible at a certain period in the development of humanity. Christ has given expression in the Sermon on the Monut to the eternal ideal toward which men are spontaneously struggling, and also the degree of attainment of it to which man may reach in our times. The ideal is not to desire to do ill to anyone, not to provoke ill will, to love all men. (Tolstoy, op. cit. p. 101)….

The ideal is to love the enemies who hate us. The precept showing the level below which we cannot fall is that of returning good for evil, being patient under wrong, giving the cloak also. (Ibid, p. 102)

This illustrates one of the ideals from the Sermon and the precept below which Tolstoy indicates we must not fall.

The concept of an ideal, to which to strive, and the accompanying precept as a kind of modest and appropriate application in a developmental progressive model, sparked by what is conceived as the divine spark within each human, is, at least to this scribe, refreshing, restorative and reconciling, within myself, as well as in the context of a relationship with God.

Let’s pause on this aspect of the Sermon….the ideal of loving the enemies who hate us. For some, those enemies may be family members, with whom we can be patient, and if and when asked for a coat, give our cloak also. For others, those enemies may be political and ideological.

Adopting this precept of returning good for evil, which some might say is the path the Democrats have adopted in their contest of shared hatreds with the Republicans. And for their attempting what society calls the ‘high road’ they are also incurring the wrath of new enemies who believe they are forfeiting the democracy at the core of the American experiment.

What would one do if one were to consider an application of the Sermon on the Mount to the divide of hatred that currently paralyzes the United States government? In retorting to the widow of Charlie Kirk’s forgiveness of her husband’s assassin, the president actually shouted, ‘Not for me, I hate my enemies! Sorry, Erika!”

If in Tolstoy’s view, there is no difference between any, no one is higher or lower, then it is clear that Erika’s path and progress toward fulfilling this aspect of the Sermon is ahead of the path and current state of the president, who, it seems, has declared his acknowledgement of a state of stasis, similar to that of the Pharisees, in his case a self-righteousness and pride of the stasis of hating his enemies.

For many people, the notion of motion, movement, transformation, and aspiration is inherent both in our mindset as well as in our nurturing, education, training and socializing. We are pointed to the future,  as part of our hard-wiring. And the notion of stasis is inherently both uncommon and tragically arresting. And that collision, between a common shared inherent ‘movement’ toward perfection in many and the stasis that has been declared by the president.

If there is any resonance, relevance and significance to the collision of a plurality of men and women inherently aspiring and moving in their personal private lives toward perfection and the will of God and a leader who is completely satisfied in his own stasis, especially one that ‘hates his enemies, the dimension of such a divide defies both language and perception for those who see themselves aspiring toward perfection.

And the risk that the ‘structure, stability, strength, and fixity of the stasis’ to seduce many who have lost sight of the inherent nature of their aspiration toward perfection (and the will of God, as Tolstoy explains it), and think that the notion of transitioning and transformations is too ethereal, ephemeral, and frothy, when compared with the concrete of ‘stasis’ (in which hate is only one important example) screams out at us.

The lie that is inherent in the stasis of stability (demonstrated by the stasis of hatred of enemies) over against the truth of inherent aspiration towards perfection and the will of God, is so camouflaged in repeated rhetorical flourishes that currently dominate the public air waves, as if that message eclipsed the more natural, flowing, developing and transforming reality of a majority of men and women in America who are genetically and spiritually wired differently.

Are there any clergy who might consider this divide worthy of their risking public shame if they were to address it? Especially in this time frame, creeds and rituals seem to be ineffectual when the cry from the ‘mount’ summons us all to resist evil by force.