Is Anger Immoral?

 I don't believe that it's intellectually or morally valid to be angry at anyone else, no matter what fucked up shit they do. 

That's a big statement. That's hard to accept. I know. 

But I really believe that people become who they are because of the shit they've been through. In most cases, the worse the person is, the harder the past they came from. If someone stole from you, they're probably going through terrible deprivation in an environment that doesn't give much credence to bodily autonomy. That's a hard environment. They're going through a lot. In all honesty, they should probably be forgive for stealing, because it's probably the best choice they had in a world of shitty choices. They probably deserve empathy before anger.

And if a person murders, then -- Jesus. What kind of life have they known? What drives a person to that? Not a wholesome adolescence. The murdered likely hates themself, and hates the world, and sees every action as some cosmological joke where nothing matters and they will likely never be able to experience true happiness ever again. The can kill because every day of their life is a kind of death in itself. 

I don't think true evil exists. Only truly damaged people in horrific circumstances.

Does that mean I wouldn't have them arrested? Try to stop them? No, of course I will. Even if I don't think they deserve anger, I don't want someone that damaged to ruin our world. But (if I were intellectually or morally perfect) I wouldn't be angry at them, only sad for them. I'd do what I could to help them while I take them out of the situation they're in, or any situation where their damage will cause harm to others.

I'm using "moral" here to mean adherence to a system of values a person chooses. Don't start thinking I've started to believe in absolute morality or some shite. 

But I also realize that if someone burned my house down or killed my dog, I'd be pissed the fuck off. And I'd have a right to be, because I'd have been wronged. No one should judge me for being angry any more than they should judge the dog-killer for what he did. We're all just responding as best we can to terrible circumstances. BUT I also want to acknowledge that I believe a better version of me wouldn't get angry. Sad, absolutely. But anger implies someone could have chosen otherwise, and -- given different circumstances, or a different personality, or a different past -- someone could have. But not that person in that situation. They're fucked up in a certain way, and they lash out at the world as the only catharsis they have left. They're to be pitied, and helped even, and yes, restrained. But they're not worth my anger.

This is why I love the Phantom of the Opera. Poor guy who's never known love tries to love someone, fucks it up, lashes out... and still learns what love is in the end, even though it's too late. He's a monster, but he's just a fucked up human trying his best to feel something real and good and wholesome and he doesn't have any idea how. In other words, he's like a lot of us. 

Tribal Truth

2020 is a crazy year. We've seen half a million die from a pandemic, the world completely shut down, rioting on the streets, a dozen other terrifying events.

Even amongst all that, to me the most alarming thing has been the complete and utter erosion of truth. And I don't mean that the truth doesn't exist; only that we live in the most polarized time I've ever seen, and for every incident that occurs in the media, you can find whatever version of truth you prefer -- and since everything these days is politicized, there are natural battle lines over everything that happens in the world today. You can't read about pandas being born at a zoo without the comment section fighting about how blind and stupid the opposition party is. I can't even know the truth about how dangerous COVID is because I'm inundated with dozens of contradictory facts every single day that suit each political party's needs. I don't know the truth, and I've put in my time and done the research. That shouldn't be possible! Viruses have nothing to do with politics! Why is it so hard to find the truth about something so important? (and people from both sides will say it's easy to find the truth and I'm foolish for missing it; but their conclusions will be opposite). Is social distancing ruining the lives of small business owners and starving poor foreign economies who rely on tourism, or is it saving lives by slowing the spread of the virus? Are we in a worse position now, during the second wave, because cases are increasing again, or are we doing great because deaths are at a low since it started? People argue with their dying breath for one or the other with no middle ground. Liberal or Conservative. Black or white. Take a side and run with it. Choose your party's truth and shout it loud, and if someone disagrees they're probably stupid because look at all the people who agree with you.

People like things to be black and white. It makes it easy to see where the battle lines are, easy to see who's part of your tribe and who's the enemy, and it gives you a built-in community during a time when community is really hard to find. I get it. You share a meme disparaging the other side and your comment section is flooded with people coming to support you, and that feels really good.

But this tribalism has completely done away with well-reasoned, fact-supported, dialectic truth, which almost always exists in the middle ground, between black and white. But if you reject black *and* white, you lose your tribe, and you find yourself alone.

And if you choose a middle view, who's going to listen? With all the shouting going on, who can even hear you? Our country, collectively, has chosen to advance two opposite versions of every truth as loudly as we can, and anyone who's not on board is left feeling isolated and confused until they join a bandwagon. But in actuality both sides have some truth, and neither side has the whole truth; and somehow any dialogue between the two results in increased division rather than a merging of the views.

I hope this goes away, but I don't see how it does. Facebook and media biases feed into division, and the internet as a medium makes hateful speech easy, since people can hide behind their screens.
To me, this is the most terrifying and depressing part of "the age of information:" weaponized data. Data can say whatever a paying proprietor wants it to say, and people have lost the ability to see from another point of view. I hope for better, but folks, the internet is a war zone right now.

Easter, Impossibility, and Intellectual Honesty

Since Easter is around the corner, where millions of of people celebrate a man coming back to life after being executed for treason 2000 years ago, according to the texts of a heretical Jewish offshoot religion of that era, I want to think a little about impossibility and implausibility.

Since the dawn of scientific reporting, there has not been one documented case of a dying thing coming back to life after three days of death -- not plants, not animals, not humans. Everything we know about life, natural laws, and science says it's impossible. It just does not happen. So when texts from a couple millennia ago say that it did happen, we all have cause to be incredibly skeptical -- just like we're skeptical when we're told that the Greek demigod Orpheus traveled to the afterworld Hades to rescue his love Euridyce (another ancient religious story about a god-being going into the afterlife as a savior, and returning). We don't even entertain the possibility of this story's credence, because as ancient religions go, they like to present fantastical stories that modern scientists will tell you are literally impossible.

For us to believe that something that goes against everything we know -- something that all our experience tells us is impossible -- we have to know for absolute, 100% certainty that nothing else, however improbable, can be the case -- otherwise, we're being intellectually dishonest. Especially if this fact is important enough to arrange your entire life around. Because if something improbable is still possible, then it should be believed over that which is, to all our understanding, impossible.

Dr. Michael Licona gives us 3 Bedrock Facts, none of which I (or most people) dispute.

1. Jesus died by crucifixion.
2. Very shortly after Jesus' death, the disciples claimed that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them.
3. Within a few years after Jesus' death, Paul claimed that Jesus resurrected and appeared to him.

And since, as far as we can tell, none of the apostles or Paul ever recanted their testimony, it seems that they must have believed in their message very strongly. I'll accept this as a Fourth Fact in good faith, though it should be noted that this is not one of Licona's Bedrock Facts.

So we must ask ourselves: Given these 3 Facts, are there any possible scenarios where Jesus of Nazareth did NOT raise from the dead in the face of all things scientific?

YES. Of course there are. There are dozens of scenarios (some improbable, but all possible) that could weave those facts together. And that alone should mean that ordering your life around an impossible interpretation of the data isn't the most intellectually honest thing to do.

I'll provide one possibility as an example. Remember, this doesn't have to accurate. It doesn't have to be true or historically proven. All this example has to do is be possible, given the 3 Bedrock Facts, and it will be more probable than the scientifically impossible scenario of the dead coming back to life. Ready? Here we go.

The year is around 30 AD. Not quite a hundred years before, Rome subjugated the nation of Israel. Ever since then, the people have bristled under a foreign rule. Now, Judaism teaches that its only ruler is Jehovah, God himself, revealing his will and contrition through a Levite Priesthood, so the Jewish people are absolutely discontent with a foreign, pagan king. Because of this discontentment, a few self-proclaimed Messiahs have been popping up every decade to throw off Roman rule and usher the Kingdom of Heaven, God's rule, back to the Israelites: Simon of Paraea, Athronges, Menahem, and a dozen others. Every single one of those Messiahs has been ruthlessly hunted down and executed, and Israel is no closer to attaining the theocracy it wants. In fact, the people becoming more and more unruly and discontent, and things are coming to a precipitously dangerous situation in which Rome, to put it bluntly, is getting pissed. And as everyone in the ancient world knows, you don't mess with the Roman Army.

Enter Jesus. Despite coming from a tiny farm town (Nazareth), he has uncommon wisdom and foresight, and he sees that unless something major changes, the Romans are going to descend on Israel and destroy it, because they're getting mighty tired of Israel's many rebellions. So he formulates a plan that involves changing a fundamental tenet of Judaism: its determined adherence to theocracy, which was inseparably enmeshed with the temple, the Levite priesthood, and the High Priest as access to God's will and God's forgiveness. Because if people can worship God without needing to live in a country politically ruled by God's chosen High Priest, then maybe Jews will calm down about Rome's rule, and Rome won't massacre the lot of them.

So Jesus puts this plan into action. He gathers twelve men and explains an idealistic and ambitious plan to lead people to a better (and politically safer) way of accessing God: through an Ultimate Sacrifice that takes the power out of the entire Jewish governmental system (the Temple, the priests, and the High Priest, all of whom are pretty corrupted by Roman influence anyhow). If Jews believed they could still follow Moses' law and still be ruled by a Roman Emperor, Jesus posited, then maybe their country, their lives, and their families would be safe. Maybe then Israel could be content to live as a subjugated country.

It was a huge task with a small chance of success, but the only alternative seemed to be the destruction of everything they loved. The twelve men, desperate to save their country, feel they only have one choice: Follow Jesus, use his message to alter the public's perception of the Priests and the Temple, and stave off Rome's apocalyptic ire... or die trying. It's a radical long-con that could save all of Israel if it worked. 

The 12 Apostles sign on with grim determination.

So Jesus preaches turning the other cheek instead of violent revolution. He teaches loving your enemies. He teaches that the meek, not the zealous, will inherit the earth. And he teaches repentance, baptism, and a new kind of Kingdom of Heaven -- one that exists not as an independent Jewish nation, but as a peaceful, loving place. And he takes on the mantle of the Messiah, Son of God, King of the Jews, and is martyred for it without a second thought just like every other Messiah claimant (the Roman regents were nothing if not thorough and brutal).

The Apostles dutifully proclaim Jesus the Nazarean as God Incarnate, a new kind of Messiah Sacrifice who rose from the dead, looks down from the right hand of God, and wants his people to love their neighbor and be meek (i.e. chill out and stop getting themselves killed in rebellions and revolutions). The Apostles are ridiculed and persecuted by the established Priesthood, whose power they're trying to take away, but they believe that their message can save a nation hurtling toward disaster, so they don't ever change course. 

Saul of Tarsus, who viewed Jesus disdainfully as just another Messiah claimant among many, came to realize what this new message could do for his country -- so he meets with the Apostles, joins their mission to bring a measure of humility an overly zealous nation, and does everything in his power to convince Israel of Jesus' divinity.

The stubborn Israelites are slow to accept the message, and it just doesn't spread through Israel quickly enough. In 66 AD, the Jews revolt again and throw back the Romans. For 4 years, they reestablish their theocracy through the Priests. And in 70AD, the frothing-furious Romans absolutely demolish Jerusalem. Brick for brick, they dismantle the city, massacring every living inhabitant. 

Jesus's ambitious plan has failed. Israel is decimated, just as Jesus foresaw would happen and tried to prevent. But maybe, Paul entreats the other Apostles, maybe if they're more organized, and maybe if the people are now a little more timid and willing to accept a meeker way of life, then maybe they can prevent this from happening again. So they write the gospels and continue evangelizing people to a religion that glorifies meekness. 

And over time, Christianity spreads. Legends grow, books are written, facts are forgotten. But the Jews no longer make sacrifices at the Temple, and no longer pine for a Priest-led theocracy.

Now -- is this what actually happened? Probably not. But it is a possibility that fits the 3 Bedrock Facts. And that makes it more believable than a scientifically impossible story about a resurrected God-incarnate carpenter. As long as we're constructing stories from those facts, the one I just wrote should be the one that you accept as more probable. Because according to everything that we've ever experienced, the Biblical story isn't possible. 

In a world where intellectual honesty is the greatest virtue, improbable should always, always be believed over impossible.

Christianity: Enforcing Holiness or Loving Without Reservation?

NonChristians feel uncomfortable in church.

That's pretty bad, right? Christians are meant to emulate love and fellowship and community, but the vast majority of people who don't share Christian beliefs feel pretty uncomfortable in Christian gathering places. And if they feel uncomfortable, Christians are gonna have a hard time reaching out to them and showing them love and Jesus and all that.

So why is that? What makes nonChristians uncomfortable?

At a guess, it's because Christians expect nonChristians to lose their own identity and to take on a Christian one whenever they step into a Christian church or a Christian home. You expect them not to cuss, and not to smoke, not to drink, not to laugh about drunken parties or stealing that street sign, and not to practice their own beliefs or their own lifestyle. You might even expect them to start singing the hymns and praying alongside you. Because it's a church, right? Or it's a Christian home, and those are pure and holy places where things of the outside world have no place.

But that's the problem. NonChristians are part of that "outside world." It's part of their identity, and if you take that away from them before inviting them in, they lose part of themselves and feel distinctly uncomfortable. Demanding that they act Christian while inside your borders will keep them outside your borders, guaranteed.

It's not your job to enforce the rules of Christianity onto nonbelievers, even in the sanctity of your own home. It's not your job to make sure they act Christian. It's your job to love nonbelievers, and to share the gospel if they're curious, and that's about it. Think about if you visited a Muslim friend's house, and they demanded that you can't pray or read the Bible while in the house. That would seem kind of disrespectful to you, right? Those things are integral to who you are as a Christian, and you'd be more than a little uncomfortable accepting their invitation to stay. Now imagine a similar situation, but reversed. If a devout Muslims asks to stay with you, are you going to allow them in only if they promise not to pray towards Mecca, because you don't condone such blasphemous prayer? They won't stay with you, because that prayer is part of their identity. What if a happy couple who has been living together for years, but are unmarried, asks to stay with you. Will you tell them that they can stay as long as they stay in separate rooms, because you don't condone such unChristian unmarried living? They won't stay with you, because that relationship is part of their identity. What's more, they'll feel judged and looked down upon, and they'll start feeling resentful towards Christians.

Stop being religious, and start loving without reservation.

Jesus ate and drank with the whores and the tax collectors and sinners, and he never demanded purity before spending time with them. He didn't have a home or a church to invite them into, but I bet if he did, he wouldn't tell them to change before he showed love and charity towards them.

I know this isn't exactly in the Bible, but think of the priest from Les Miserables. In the story, Jean val-Jean is cold and starving, and the priest invites him into his home, telling him that he should treat everything as his own. Feeling lost and desperate, valJean steals the silver dinnerware and runs off in the night. The authorities catch him and bring him back to the priest, where he expects to be indicted and sent back to prison. But instead of charging him with the theft (to demonstrate that he doesn't condone thievery, as a good pharisee would), he tells val-Jean that he forgot the silver candlesticks, which are worth a lot more. The police leave, and val-Jean's life is forever changed by the man's love. The priest didn't expect valJean to be a Christian. He just loved him, and that love made him feel more welcome in the priest's home than anywhere else in the world.

Because being holy isn't about abiding by laws, it's about loving. Let me say that again: Loving is what sets people apart and makes them holy. And love has nothing to do with abiding by laws or enforcing laws, even God's laws. Love is about taking people as they are and showing them as much selflessness as you can give them, and that's what Christianity is meant to be about. When you think it's about changing their actions, you're only going to hurt relationships and drive people away.

Stop being religious, and start being Christian. Stop trying to enforce laws, and start loving without reservation. Your churches and homes may not be as pristine and pretty and holy, but they will be a lot more real and great deal more comfortable to nonChristians. Maybe nonChristians will start feeling loved instead of judged. Maybe nonChristians won't feel looked down upon and inferior. Maybe, if you really, really try to love without reservation, you could even show them a little of what Jesus is supposed to look like.

Justice vs Love

I used to think that God's foremost quality was Love. I still want to believe that, but it's come to my attention that the Christian God, at least, is equal parts of Love and Justice, and has a passion for each that it beyond the ken of humanity.

Love, of course, consists of relationships. It manifests in selflessness and sacrifice. This is the aspect of God that we tend to focus on today, the one that we like to hear about. Not the God of fire and brimstone, but Abba, Father. The God who sent Jesus to save us so he could spend eternity with us. And this is, indubitably, a part of God's nature. God does, in fact, love us more than we could ever imagine.

But the other part is Justice, and Justice is just as integral to God as Love is. It's a part of who he is. Now, Justice deals with the law (a law that has its soul in Love). It also deals with punishment and reward according to what we deserve according to that law. God's Justice says that the wages of sin is death--or, more on point, the punishment of sin is everlasting torment with Satan. He also says that the reward for righteousness (a righteousness that can only be attained through accepting Jesus' sacrifice, not by works) is eternal life with Him. Punishment and Reward, very simply. One is eternal bliss, the other eternal torment. There is no grey area.

This marriage of Love with Justice explains much of the tougher aspects of Christianity, particularly the institution of Hell. Why does sin merit such a harsh punishment? Because God's wrath at a violation of the law of Love is virtually unending. He loves the righteous with a burning, everlasting love -- and he despises the unrighteous with an equal degree of loathing. He cannot do otherwise, because he IS Justice, just as he IS Love. It is just as much out of character to release sinners from torment as it would be to reject one of his beloved sons or daughters.

According to this system, Christians have indeed been saved from death by Jesus' sacrifice, and it was a great act of Love -- the greatest, even, for it replaces infinite wrath with infinite love. Humans have all broken the Law of Love, and according to God's Justice, we all deserve the eternal wrath of an infinite being. Because Jesus took that punishment on himself, God now sees those that follow Christ as perfect beings worthy of heaven. So there are only two options for humanity: repent or perish. And according to Love and Justice, this all makes sense, and it is both loving and just.

My issue, though, is that it seems to me that Justice and Love are two logically incommensurate values--that God cannot claim both of these to the utmost degree. In other words, to be completely Just, God must sacrifice being Loving. And to be completely Loving, God must sacrifice Justice. This is because while an action like sending people to hell to be tormented for eternity may indeed be Just, it certainly has no Love in it. It doesn't lead to a relationship, and it isn't selfless or sacrificial. It's just the law, and a terrible, painful, and hard law. Likewise, if God made exception to people who refused to bow the knee to him -- if he refused to punish them eternally because of his magnanimous Love -- then he would be denying his own Justice.

So it seems to me that the two aspects of God that are the strongest and most lauded character traits are logically unable to exist in the same God at the same time. And I think that many people realize this, and that's why we get books trying to explain how hell isn't what we think it is. In this age, people want a God whose Love is more powerful than his Justice, who would never dream of shutting himself away from his creation for any reason; who would never create a place where everlasting torment has its way with frail humanity. The other end of that spectrum is preaching Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God -- a concept rebuffed by some, but equally as valid according to Scripture. It's a God whose Justice is to be feared and accepted, a God whose Love only extends to the cross and no further.

Logically, there seems to be no middle ground. Either God's Justice or his Love must triumph, and hell indicates the triumph of Justice over Love.

the wine of god's wrath

And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt...

--Exodus 7:5 

I've been reading this book, Erasing Hell by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle. It's written as a response to the more post-modern "Christian Universalist" position that is becoming increasingly popular, and it's written as an honest inquest into the Biblical reality of hell.

And it makes me extremely uncomfortable.


You see, at the same time as I'm reading this book, I'm watching the ninth and tenth seasons of Stargate SG-1, where the enemy is this huge religion from another galaxy and its gods, called the Ori. The priests of the Ori perform miracles, healing sick, raising people from the dead, etc-- unless someone claims to not believe in their divinity. At that point, the Ori will kill entire planets. They demand worship, and if a people refuse to bow the knee, they are killed. Follow the Ori or die.


When SG-1 resists the Ori, they are always asked, "You question the power of the Ori?" And they always respond, "No. We know your power, and it's awe-inspiring. What we question is your right to claim authority over beings of lesser power. We question your morality. We question your godhood."


And the picture Francis Chan paints of God (and even Jesus) is one of a God who has a huge emphasis in "severely punish[ing] those who do not bow the knee to King Jesus. (pg. 103)" He pulls passage after passage from the Old Testament, from Jesus, and from Paul and Peter which paint quite vividly a portrait of a wrathful, vengeful, condemning God who will cast all who do not follow Jesus and obey his gospel into a place where they will be "tormented day and night forever and ever." 


Like Stargate's "Ori," God offers the "good news:" bow the knee and be saved from torment. This is God's love.  This is the gospel. Instead of being cast into eternal torment, we can worship a being of incomprehensible power. No other option, no other choice. Subjection or torment. Convert or die. This is not love. This is not morality. This is "might makes right" on a divine scale.


What makes a God? Is it power, or is it morality? For my part, I could not worship an immoral God, no matter how powerful he is. And that's why this doctrine makes me uncomfortable. In my understanding of morality, love keeps no record of wrongs. Love forgives its enemies and prays for its persecutors. Love does not sentence someone to eternal torment-- no matter what he's done, and especially not for simply refusing to bow his knee. So why does God do this?

"God's ways are higher than our ways," Chan reminds us. His methods are not for us to understand, but simply for us to obey. Nevertheless, humanity understands morality, don't we? We know, at least generally, what's right and what's wrong, what's loving and what's evil. We know that if someone extends the choice "follow my commands or be cast into eternal torment," that's wrong. What makes it right for God? Do we assign him moral immunity simply for the vastness of his power?

And people will say, "No, God is saving us from our own sin. It's not God who sends us to hell, but we choose it when we sin." To which I would respond, "Who decided that the wages of sin is death? Is that a law even God must follow? A truth more universal than our Creator?"

The bottom line is, hell makes me nauseous. I don't understand how an ethically perfect being could torment his own creation for refusing to acknowledge him as their god. Chan makes it very clear that hell is not remedial--it doesn't fix people--it's just punishment. It's just vengeance born of anger. It seems incredibly contrary to me for Jesus to tell us to love our enemies one minute and preach the horrors of hell the next. Is God above his own moral law? Is that moral?

Sometimes I feel wistful

It was him, wiping away tears of joy at just seeing her.
Her, beaming and giddy and skipping and laughing.
Him, not reciting a formula but literally shouting his love.
Her, holding his face to hers for just a second longer.
Both of them, holding hands, skipping and dancing out of the chapel.

I've never been a fan of weddings. They're boring, they're all pretty similar, they all end the same. That, though, wasn't a wedding so much as a celebration. It was like a pronouncement that these two kids are perfectly in love, and plan to be for pretty much ever. It was the best day of their life, and everyone could tell. There was no reservation. It wasn't a ritual for them; it was a gift to each other, from each other.

I feel like I suddenly understand the dying institution-- you don't get married to "become one flesh." You get married because you can't comprehend being with anyone else for the rest of your life. You don't want anything else. A lot of guys label it a prison, but to him it was more like finding freedom. Like, in his wife, in that union, he found himself more himself, if that makes any sense. It was really neat. You could see this love between them that they were dying to find a way to express. Marriage was the most natural step in the world.

I wonder if I'll ever feel that strongly for anyone. I wonder if it's even possible.

In any case, congrats, guys. That was fun to watch.