Do you spend time critiquing the people around you? Do they just keep looking worse and worse to you? Judah exposes this attitude for the narrow, self-centered posturing that it is. Look on the world with love! -Editor.
I can’t stand those blind idiots who rant about the self-satisfied fools who condemn judgmental morons for categorically hating bigots (and just between you and me, although I believe that bigots are people too, you know what I think about people…)
So I was reading Secrets of Heaven no. 1079. It’s about Noah, after the flood. The water has gone down, and Noah and his clan have disembarked and thanked God for their deliverance. Life returns to normal. Noah even plants a vineyard and makes some wine, but he overdoes it. Drunk and naked, he is sprawled out in his tent, asleep, when in walks his son, Ham. Ham goes and brings his two brothers, presumably to let them in on the joke. But it’s no laughing matter, as Shem and Japheth are savvy enough to know, and they walk backwards until they’ve draped some clothing over their father’s bare form.
Who is Ham? What does his mockery mean? According to the passage I was reading, Ham represents those contemptuous folks who only ever notice the failings in the people around them.
About those people—you know who I’m talking about: I can think of a bunch of them off the top of my head. I can picture them now, gleefully recounting the follies of others. What benighted morons. They should know better.
Oops.
Let me take this opportunity to quote a bit:
Where there is no charity, there is the love of self, and therefore hatred against all who do not favor self. Consequently such persons see in the neighbor only what is evil, and if they see anything good, they either perceive it as nothing, or put a bad interpretation upon it.
Is it possible that I, at this very moment, am seeing only what is evil in my neighbor? It’s remarkable how quickly and subtly my picture of a person can change: one moment, Joe is a fond acquaintance; the next, I’m feeling delightfully repulsed by his warty face and uncomfortable stench (metaphorically speaking, of course).
What happened? All I did was read something from the Writings. And think of some examples—you know, applying it to life.
Seriously, it is an inspiring passage. The question is, where do you get your inspiration from?
What happened? How can my sense of reality shift so drastically and at the same time so smoothly, like butter falling off a hot knife? Although there’s lots of fun stuff to explore about a person’s spiritual environment, I’ll leave the particular mechanics of how we get snookered into a false perspective for another article. For now I’m focusing on the basic self-examination that I feel impelled to do when I read such a passage. How often do I look out upon humanity with an eye to magnifying the bad? How often, when I’m reading some New Church collateral work, do I latch on to ideas that I want to parade as foolish and harmful? When I read Google news, I get up from the computer and feel excited about people, or do I get up with a sick feeling in my stomach and a scowl on my face? do
And the challenge that lingers is this: there is evil; there is harm; there is grief and sorrow and hatred. And don’t we need to identify what’s evil, so that good may conquer? So that what we love, what we believe to be really real, can flourish in us and in the world around us? It is undeniable that other people are afflicted by evil, sometimes with what seems to be alarming participation. What do we do with it? How do we respond? Shouldn’t we “do something about it”? “There oughta be a law!”
Sometimes it looks like this or that person or group of people is particularly entrenched in something from hell, and we choose to adapt our response to those people in the context of that evil. But for God’s sake, let’s love each other first and foremost—love each other like we want our worst national enemy or our biggest church heretic or our noisiest bigot to actually be free from evil, and not damned. Like we actually long for them to say in their spirit, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a firm spirit within me; restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation!” It’s a tall order, I know, but listen to what’s going on spiritually when we focus on evil. Again from that same number:
For [in the other life] with those who are in no charity, the feeling of hatred shines forth from every single thing; they desire to examine everyone, and even to judge him; nor do they desire anything more than to find out what is evil, constantly cherishing the disposition to condemn, punish, and torment.
Naturally, a frothing bigot is the perfect target for a self-righteous critic of mankind. And that sniveling fool is the subject of eloquent rants by the People Against Criticism circles, etc, etc. Not a happy state of life. But it gets worse. Consider the alternative:
Whereas—very differently—those who are in the faith of charity observe what is good, and if they see anything evil and false, they excuse it, and if they can, try to amend it in him, as is here said of Shem and Japheth. […] But they who are in charity scarcely see the evil of another, but observe all his goods and truths, and put a good interpretation on what is evil and false. Such are all the angels, which they have from the Lord, who bends all evil into good.
On the one hand, imagine waking up every morning with this perspective emblazoned on your heart—would life be anything but a joy? An exercise comes to mind: think of the human being, past or present, whom you despise most: now picture everything you know about them—all their depravity, all the legends, all the rumors; now, don the angelic worldview outlined above and take another look. Can you bring yourself to do it? What do you see? How does it feel?
So, on the other hand, who can possibly accept this teaching? What about the very real problems in people’s lives? What about their follies and foibles? What about their catastrophic mistakes and twisted delusions? What about their abject cruelty and cold-hearted lust? Are we to turn a blind eye to evil and pretend that life is nothing but butterflies and lollipops and puffy pink clouds?
I don’t think it works, in light of numerous other New Church teachings, to suppose that we must do nothing to protect what is good and true. But when it comes to evil, have you noticed how defense-oriented the Writings are? For the most part, fighting evil is qualified as protecting good; the emphasis is always the good and true; love can’t begin until I reject evil, but love isn’t hating evil; love itself is unequivocally good and productive (despite being present with and loving the lowest devils, the Lord Himself has no contact with evil, see True Christian Religion 56). To me in my murky, self-absorbed path of life, evil is something that needs to be dealt with, to be reacted against, to be fixed, to be fought, to be focused on. But I am not in heaven. And the more I rant and rave about evil, the more it blackens my horizon.
As to what the balance is between a careless ignorance of harm and a merciful, informed ignorance that looks to the good in others—your guess is as good as mine.
But from now on, when I see the need to highlight someone’s mistakes, maybe I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, shun some contempt and pride, and re-focus on the good in that person that I want to reinforce. Yup—even those #&@!* people (you pick) who are involved in the “middle-east” conflict(s).
Perhaps the Lord Jesus Christ wishes them well.
Do I?