The Law Will Fix It. We need a law! There Oughta Be a Law! If people would just follow the law we could have paradise! Before Eve ate from the tree of knowledge Eden was a paradise. It’s her fault.
Let’s talk about legalism. No, no brilliance in the next 2500 words. I’m an old cab driver. I have enough brilliance to get me through a fifteen minute ride. After that? Not so much. The rest of this is my reflection on legalism as we are living it today, in ‘merica, with a dying empire.
My Abrahamic brethren believe that الطريق الى الجنة is paved with law books. If we are good enough, devout enough, strict enough in our practice of the laws given to us by God, we can achieve the perfection needed to get into heaven. That’d be nice. A core belief of myself and fellow disciples of Jesus of Nazareth is that we are fallen. We can’t be devout enough to enter into heaven just by our religious devotion to following the law. The law is not enough.
GUNS! OH MY!
Every damned time. Someone murders people with a gun who were just living their best lives at the wrong place and time. So we sing the same dirge one more time, “we have to have reasonable gun control laws.” Because it is presumed that our current gun control laws are insufficiently strict. “There Oughta Be a Law!” is sung with fervor.
Dem doze ‘isms. Racism, sexism, transphobia, classism, and/or ableism. To be accepted as one of the Woke True Folk you have to score a high enough intersectionality score. Life is a constant fight to adhere to an ever shifting set of laws defining an ephemeral orthodoxy. It is a fight few can win.
God. Don’t even think about it. There is no religion, no god, only the law. Follow the law and maybe, if you are devout enough, you might get to return in your next incarnation. God is dead, ok?
Highness
It’s very codependent. We can survive our toxic relationships to addicts by placating them. If we are good enough, supportive enough of legalist progressives they will approve of us. All we have to do is follow their capricious rules.
SJW is an addiction to outrage. Social Justice Warriors need the oxytocin and endorphin fix that comes from staying on the boil. Like an opiate addiction just maintaining isn’t enough. SJW’s need their hit. So someone must be sacrificed. The subculture demands it.
I make a distinction between those who are passionate about making our nation a better place for all of us and those who point their poisoned social spears at the latest, fashunable enemy as justification for evil. Yes, we should do our small things with great love to both grow and serve those around us. No, it’s not healthy to blame and bully the failings of those around us for our miseries. It might be Trump’s fault but it is you who has agency and thus, an ability to do something healthy about it.
Three Demands
The SJW’s in question have three core demands. First, God and us must come correct for the SJW to be serene. Second, more law is needed. Why more law? Because more law will improve compliance and thus, bring us closer to الجنة. Last, it is never the fault of an SJW. Something or someone external is the reason for individual or collective misery. So the demand is that the someone or something behave in a desirous way for الجنة to be achieved.
If you are in recovery, affiliated with someone in recovery, or read up on it, you know what this is. This is codependency. Some facts: God made this world. He is an infinite God. He has no obligation to bend to your will. Quite the opposite. We are obligated to God.
Here is a problem for an SJW–the God sized hole in our hearts. It’s in all of us because he made us from dust. So there is a bit of him in us that wants to be filled by Him. Some Woke True Folk try to fill that hole with something. One thing that seems to be an option is adherence to THE LAW. It is never enough. The only thing that can fill that hole is our creator God.
You Do It
I come from red diapers. I believed in Taxi Unlimited. The two years I was a member it was dominated by drug addiction. One by one the members most capable either died, started rehab, or went to jail. I moved out of my squat under the stairs of the house that the cab office backed up onto. My new home was the California Hotel on Shattuck Avenue.
I believed. I believed that it wasn’t my fault. My Dad messed me up. His ancestry and his success gave me privilege that oppressed the less fortunate. I needed more therapy.
My therapist needed more stories. I’m pretty entertaining when I need to be. A lesson learned: nobody really wanted me to be self-reliant and healthy. Their energy came from my malaise. Plus, being a bougie WASP meant that I was obligated to confess my whiteness on the regular.
Be Needin Grace
Legalism knows nothing of grace. You cannot be forgiven. If you have ever stepped out of line you will wear that scarlet letter for the rest of your life. Am I spotless? Heck no. I’ve talked about my adjectives in 22 posts dating back to 2015. If I haven’t confessed enough for you, so be it.
Divorce taught me the value of grace. One of my adjectives is wife-beater. I had a choice. I could chase revenge or I could forgive her and pursue the high road. Revenge was a road to long prison time. Grace was harder but I get to keep my freedom and rebuild my life and reputation.
I chose the discipline of grace more than twenty years ago. It saved my life. Along the way I also had to choose who would fill my God sized hole in my heart. My anarchist friends all seemed to be rotating between the street, the hospital, jail and rehab. They were down for the cause which meant they were simply out.
God’s House
John 14:2, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”
Following Christ has been a steady death to habits that keep me from Christ. In their place are disciplines that bring me closer to Him. I’m solidly in His hands steadily walking home.
Please consider something. We recognize that an accomplished musician didn’t start out playing beautifully. That musician played in the grade school orchestra and sounded awful. The difference is that decades later, after thousands of hours of practice and lessons, now they are amazing. They put in the work.
That describes my life as a disciple of Christ. It didn’t start out amazing. I sinned, caused myself to need to apologize, and just went through the motions for a while.
Snake Oil
There are brethren that I don’t like. It’s the crowd that insists God fill them with feels. A good worship service feels like good sex. Ecstasy is holiness for them. This same crowd puts on a high pressure sales pitch every Sunday. They are selling salvation through a public response to an altar call. Also . . . shut up. Don’t question the sales pitch. Just believe. Just join the bacchanal and declare your undying faith.
I don’t last long in a congregation like that. I met Christ after I beat my wife and left her. He’s there when I’m sure this time, this fresh misery, will be the end of me. I don’t need a rock band and a spastic preacher to further my discipleship. I just need some help learning how to do this Jesus Way.
I’m not judging the holy roller crowd. Well . . . maybe I am. I am saying that we are billions with millions of ways to follow Christ that are authentic even though the ways seem weird to me. Also, yeah, we have rules and laws within the church. What’s different is what’s at the center of our discipleship. Where American Progressives put the Quran and St. Marx and St. Mao at the core our center is love and grace through the martyred stone mason from Nazareth.
Law Fail
For the thousands of years described in the Old Testament God’s chosen people would promise to behave—for a while. The start was always great. Then time passes and compliance gets steadily worse. The Asherah poles come back. Temples to pagan gods return. God’s people drift away again. Legalism seemed like the right plan at the beginning. Now it’s just an absurd stack of ignored papyri.
So God would punish Israel. He destroyed the cities of his people. God exiled them from the land promised to Moses. Until enough time passed that the transgressors were more than dead–they were forgotten. Rinse, repeat.
Until the dissident stone mason from Nazareth began teaching a scandalous read of the law. We are answerable as individuals for the condition of our souls. There was individual salvation in the place of collective condemnation. He baptized with the holy spirit and forgave sins. Blasphemy!
You Are the Main Course
It’s not oppressor/oppressed. It’s predator/prey. You are either eating the main course or you are the main course. It’s the crunchiness and your good taste slathered in ketchup. Legalism traps you into a world of impossible conflicts. The effect of the conflicts is to keep you on the boil. Your aroused emotions are the main dish. Those addicted to outrage, often SJW’s, need to eat your aroused emotions, so please continue to stay outraged.
Who said that? C.S. Lewis in, “The Screwtape Letters.” There is one more to add to the predator/prey dichotomy–redeemed. Christ promises us eternal life. He is the answer to a demand to choose to be either predator or prey. As a disciple of Christ we are neither predator nor prey.
Our law includes mercy and grace. When a legalist fails the injury to their social status is permanent. Islam is clear on the consequences of violating الشريعة الاسلامية. Don’t violate الشريعة الاسلامية. People do and brutality ensues.
The Choice
Legalism and its allies don’t forgive. You have sinned so you are condemned. The only question is what the punishment will be and for how long. I am irredeemable to legalists because of my ancestry, my father’s success, and my own misdeeds. I’d love a more equitable and just world.
The world is neither just nor equitable. The world doesn’t care about your social credit score or intersectionality score. The wind blows where it will and no amount of rituals and incense will make a difference. Bad shit happens, some of it because of bad people. Woo.
So . . . battle with God and the world and its people? Escalate to iterations of hospital, jail, rinse, repeat? That life becomes a sequence of escalating negative consequences that continue until you either quit it or die. You give a bit more of your life force to evil with each iteration. Spiritual death happens long before you own a toe tag.
The Turning Tide
Marx published the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The Quran is 1,410 years old. Mao’s Little Red Book is the most recent, published in 1964. Some form of legalism is over 1,400 years old. Communism, in one form or another, has been with us for over 170 years. How is that working for us?
American Maoism couldn’t get traction with a grievance against wealth. So Progressives switched to race. Their target was white people. All the sins of humanity were laid at the feet of white people. White people need their comeuppance. Reparations must be paid. Rules and laws passed to foment a more diverse, equitable and inclusive utopia. It’s not working.
Barack Hussein Obama II was the first king in a dynasty. He was the victory of legalism and Islamic Maoism. There would be no more opposition victories. The Law would rule for a thousand years. The Great Satan defeated in his home to be replaced by الجنة.
And then . . . التهديد البرتقالي
Cheetolini won. Again. His bag man and royal concubine sought election to the throne and lost. The Senate shifted to Papaya Batista. The worst outcome ever.
I don’t know what’s next. I know that my life was saved by grace. In 2002 I faced a choice. I could pursue my pound of flesh or I could take the high road. A legalist frame could justify claiming my pound of flesh. There might be something in الشريعة الاسلامية that would support this. I don’t know it well enough to say. My friends argued for taking the high road because nothing good would come from seeking revenge.
I’ll predict this–legalism will continue to fail. Islam won’t go away but it will collapse into a squealing piglet unable to command effective governing power. The future of government is in something closer to Reformed Tradition Christianity. As for me, I chose light when I was fourteen. It’s been a rough pilgrimage since. I tasted Satan’s buffet and didn’t like it. So I feast at the table of the Lord.