The Next Level Revisited (and then some)

"So - why do you suppose God chose to make man in His image and likeness? (Assuming there is a God, of course; though you must admit, the metaphor does have some excellent uses).

"Why else? except that from the beginning He intended man to be an infinitely self-divinizing creature, who must ever be striving to pitch his tent in places of always-ascending grades of difficulty, hardship, inhospitality. Places - such as commonly denoted by terms like 'desert,' 'wilderness,' 'wasteland,' etc - places in which, no matter how strong or even dominant you are, the struggle for life is keen. Perhaps even brutal. If not utterly grueling and exhausting. Places, in short, in which fragile creatures can be neither cherished, nor respected, nor even protected - but only despised. (Including such fragile creatures as man himself was, at the outset of his journey.)

"But not just despised, please note, but shown nothing whatever of what - well, most of us would recognize as understanding, or mercy, or love. The point being that, if man really wants to be loved, and to render himself worthy of being loved (by God or anyone else), he must be prepared to make himself always stronger, and stronger . . . (part I, pars. 5-7)

"How else, indeed, is he ever going to succeed in taking himself - not to mention everything else - to that ever-insatiable next level? How otherwise, do you suppose, is he ever going to make himself 'at home' in the near-total desert and inhospitality of outer space?

"Or perhaps you thought he was going to colonize and subdue the farthest reaches of the universe by being some meek and tender sacrificial lamb?"

Why WOULD You?

Certain highly successful and influential persons of our time (who may or may not be narcissists): 

"It's all quite simple, really: I want what I want what I want. And I also happen to be extremely good at getting it."

But that's just it: Why would you?

Why on earth would you have such confidence in the judgment of your own will as to believe you'd actually be happier, or better off, by getting everything (or even most of what) you want? Or even by getting most everything you've rationally determined that you should want? Why would you ever have such overarching confidence in the judgment and powers of your own mind, as to believe that getting what you think you want will make you happier? 

Or if you like, never mind about being happier. Especially since - as I think by now our more globally-minded rulers have amply demonstrated - this Great Global World is not about happiness, whether their own or anyone else's. So here's a suggestion: Let's do our best to leave behind, once and for all, the unedifying, unproductive, hedonistic 1960s, '70s and '80s. At least as I recall them here in America. (par. 3) And then let us proceed to be as primly, austerely altruistic as we 21st-centurily can. So - to rephrase my question: Why would you imagine that getting even what you most rationally want would somehow make you "better," or wiser? Or more righteous, or productive? Or nobler or grander or more heroic? Or even more superior?

Alright, I take that last part back. Because the truth is, getting more or less exactly what we think everyone should want has been known to make some of us vastly superior, in certain altogether measurable and quantifiable ways (wealth, votes, grants and subsidies, promotions, both occupational and sexual opportunities) over all other visible creatures of this earth. Including sometimes our fellow humans. Even if for this earthly life only.

My final question, then, is why anyone in his right mind and will would ever want that "dream come true"? That degree of, let us say, overweening advantage over practically everything else in the visible creation. Yes, that may be your dream. But in that case, perhaps you might want to take a lesson or two from the invisible creation. I mean, consider the wonderful job Satan has made of his utterly unprecedented - and unrepeatable - creaturely superiority over everything the Lord God had made. Can you honestly say you're pleased with the results? More to the point, do you honestly think you could go him one better?

Some Right-side Bearings

I don't say that this is something guaranteed to make everybody happy. 

But what I think I've learned, these past 15 or so years, is that there is no human satisfaction quite like moral superiority. Especially when you know -  I mean, you know that you know that you know - you're doing your very best to be right. Whereas, if only you could be half-as-sure about the guy next to you . . .

Except that having and holding the moral high ground these days can be quite a challenging feat. If not positively acrobatic. And all the more so, of course, when it is the politically* moral high ground you're after.

*And, seriously, is there anything authentically moral that isn't also political?

In brief, how can you be sure that the political position you held last week, and in complete good faith, will have the same morally unassailable credentials a week from now? Or next month, or next year? Indeed, if I may venture to say: If there's one safe bet anyone can make, it is that our moral progress is only sure to get more complicated with time. And Progress. 

At the same time, either there have been - across the political and geopolitical West - certain recognizable patterns and consistencies these past 20-odd years, or else I've grown completely psychotic (no comments please). And so, for all you tender souls who'd like nothing better than a map for staying on the Right Side of History, of course I don't have one. But here, I think, are some pretty solid ground rules all but guaranteed to please eve the purest, most globally-enlightened bien-pensants. But especially those of this Most Enlightened Point in All of Human Time:

1) Russia, in all she does, is never provoked by anyone (and when she is, you'd better believe she roundly deserves it); (bottom of par. 2)

2) Islam - and in particular those revanchist supremacist anti-Western modes of Sunni Islam that have grown exponentially under the favor of the US global security establishment - is never unprovoked in anything it does; plus the provocations it suffers are always unmerited (meaning even its seemingly most disproportionate  acts of retaliation are always understandable, if not completely defensible);

3) Israel, by her mere existence, is a standing and heinous act of provocation to all properly sensitive, right-thinking, rightly-discerning people (and not just to all righteous Muslims); 

4) China (aka Beijing) is the world's ultimate wise and benign provocateur, apart from whose unceasing innovations, provocations, challenges, dynamism, bio-warfare researches, etc, mankind would still be living in the 21st-century equivalent of mud huts and caves.

The Bloodiness of Knowing Too Soon

If this recent Christmas season has convinced me of anything, it is that it is possible to know too much all at once - or much too soon - for anyone's good,  including our own. And especially in the matter of doing God's will. For instance, you or I might be a veritable Saul of Tarsus of holy-and-righteous determination. To say nothing of bloody-minded indignation. Yet even then, it sometimes behooves us to be at least as patient with God, and with His time and manner of unfolding, as He is with us, and ours. Even though that Divine patience might consist, at least initially, of knocking us off a high horse or two. 

In contrast, I wonder if there are any limits to the ways in which our Maker can re-make and re-direct a soul properly teachable. As a case in point, consider the main characters of the Christmas story. Note how, unlike with our hero Saul, God never once uses a violent means to dissuade Joseph, on the return from exile in Egypt, from re-settling the Holy Family in Judaea instead of Galilee. Nor, for that matter, does He have to knock heads to discourage the Wise Men from returning to their home countries via Herod's all-welcoming Jersualem. In the same way, although Joseph was likely none too happy about the brute (and often ugly) fact of Roman occupation, he never once considered it his calling to execute judgment or revenge upon his country's occupiers - any more than the Magi regarded the assassination or other conspiratorial undermining of Herod as part of their mission. What each of them did, rather, was to understand just where his part in the execution of the Divine plan began, and where it ended. They were not out to save the world singlehanded, or even to speed up the pace and progress of the world's salvation, but merely to be its instruments.

Of course we can all be, and all have been, very different from Joseph, Mary and Jesus. We can have what we think is the completest blueprint, or game plan, or ultimate goal or end in view. So that all we have to do, having just been passed the ball, is to take and run with it. Yet notice how soon does our pending success become hostage to something we've got in our possession, yes - but that we dare not let go of. And how sometimes that Something - that all-consuming Action - in order to achieve its all-devouring object, has literally got to hack its way through thickets and jungles, not of foliage, but of human innocents of every age and description. And not just the occupier's innocents, but our own.

Again, this was not Jesus,' or Mary's, or Joseph's Way. But if you like, by way of direct contrast, picture if you can a very different Holy Family. One that was always confidently demanding to know everything up front. Imagine them being overbriefed on every minutest point and detail of an itinerary already bursting at the seams: a mission pregnant, not just with the future of Judaea or Rome or the whole world of antiquity, but with the fate of all mankind. Think of Joseph knowing all that in advance. And then wrestling with, or being tempted by, the knowledge that this mission, if done right, would in fullness of time result in the expulsion of the hated occupier (in this case not Jewish but Roman) from Palestine! Picture his anxiety, his fear of failure, the temptation to self-importance, the pressure of performance "required" to bring the Child safely back to Nazareth. The sense, in short, that pretty much everything depended on him. And then consider how that might have goaded him on towards, if not a violent, surely a more forceful acceleration and consummation of a goal known in its fullness only to his God and Father: and known by Him, not just from start to finish, but in every detail and segment and manner of unfolding. How else, indeed, except by leaning in as close as they could to Him, should the Holy Family have escaped a planned, orchestrated massacre of epic proportions - and that, again, of innocents?

The point here being, I believe, that sometimes it is enough to wait, and watch, and trust, and act trustfully and expectantly. As opposed to being sure of knowing everything right up to the end result, and then, why, simply following through. Except that, in the latter case, as you try to "rush project to completion," you very quickly find out that it's up to you to fill in the details, to try anything ("whatever works"), to probe every opening and opportunity,  in the ever more frantic effort to bring your devoutly wished consummation to pass. And in the meantime, watch - as your "progress" becomes steadily more protracted, more grueling, and far more stress- than grace-filled - how the bodies and the blood keep piling up. 

But if I may to return to the Holy Family, with its simple, stark, uncluttered faith. Ask yourself: Was there really anybody else, up to that point in time (or even up till now), who could have understood and entered into, not just the will or the command, but the very heart and longing, the inmost desire and good pleasure of the Father, and more fully - more closely and intimately - than this strange, humanly impossible human trinity? See again and again how they choose to trust in, and so experience the very presence of, the Father's unfolding heart. Rather than having to know every stage of it in advance, as if it were a mere project to be executed. God rarely speaks in blueprints. And even if He should come up with one for so wise an Age as ours, somehow I don't think even the most god-submitted Hamas, or our most globally-wise US security establishment, is likely to be stumbling on it anytime soon.