A most unholy time

[I suggest this be played if you want to proceed reading this entry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh31j6L95Ok]

The brighter our technology illuminates the skyline, the higher our skyscrapers point at Heaven, the gloomier we seem to sink, the darker our condition seems to turn. Reason has unlocked the secrets of the demiurge, with which we twist nature at our will. But it is the outer nature that we think we command, not our inner being. Reason thought back some centuries ago that we could control ourselves as much as we control other selves. All vanity. Pure and shallow vanity. The truth is that after so much effort trying to conceive of a model with which we could control our inner nature by reason, we had to yield to technology. It is the second prize, because not being able to determine ourselves, we decided to determine outer nature as our revenge. But we have been deluded by our pride. The nature we thought we were commanding is returning for pay back, even if it's just for the pleasure of ridiculing our aggrandized self-esteem.

But now that we are well ahead in this monstrous world of ours, this deformed Earth we have created, and that we seem to recreate every year more uglier, it is not spurious to turn back and think of what we have lost. I heard once the argument that nuclear weapons secured world peace, at least between nuclear powers, the most dangerous of actors. But if that is true, then that will be the last peace of our times, before the next war clean all our chronometers. What we have gained in peace for our bodies to enjoy a worldly life has cost us the incalculable loss of the peace of our spirits. It has cost our lives in the Spirit itself. Like Faust, we have sold our souls to the Devil. And for what? Some generations of awesome technology and that's all. All vanity.

I have received from colleges of mine the unfortunate contempt when I use the Pope as a reliable reference. What we have lost is so big, so incalculable, that the so called tolerance and liberal secularism clouds our vision in its entirety. The contempt felt for the Pope Benedict XVI, a most knowledgeable and illustrated man, not only in theology, but in philosophy and literature, science and history, making him one of the most potent intellectuals of our time, is regarded with the lowest and most shameful contempt by people of reputed education. Uttering his name, even before any argument is made, is enough for some to just simply drop out of the conversation. What is going on? Have we gone totally mad? I find myself with people that ignores completely the beautiful, enlightening, love-driven and tolerant teachings of Benedict XVI, and take him for absolutely the opposite of what he is and what he says! It is a startling, even depressing condition.

There is only one thing that I can think of that makes contemporary and educated sons of Catholicism block their minds to his words and ideas. They just simply don't want to hear, it doesn't matter what he says. This denial, this absolute contempt from what he has to say is worrisome. Really worrisome. It shows intolerance, hatred, but worse of all, it shows fear. Fear of what? Of being remembered of what they want to forget: that we have been living unchristian lives; and we know, deep in our souls, that it's wrong. Modern minds are terribly afraid of what is sacred, because there is an intuitive knowledge that we are living the most unholy of existences. And this goes for all of us! Me included! But the petite bourgeoisie ethos of a life of private enjoyment depends on ignoring these facts. Certain people are so afraid of guilt, of remorse, that they rather live in denial, constructing the most sophisticated and comprehensive doctrines of society and liberty for the sole purpose of clouding the Spirit in us. God is no longer welcome. He is a nuisance to our modern ways. We want to banish Him. Maybe as a revenge against Him for banishing us from the Garden of Eden? What is the modern myth of the Revolution if not a kind of low revenge to the One that died for our salvation? We want to cast disbelief in the story of Christ, because his sacrifice makes us feel uneasy and ashamed. Ashamed of us not answering his love back. Modern individualism is the ideological device to deny, temporarily forget, the love that He deserved back from us. I think this is among the reasons why educated people today prefer to turn deaf ears when the name of the Pope is uttered, even though he is a publicly acknowledged man of wisdom and piety. His piety is painful; it's so demanding that we rather ignore, and move on. Fear and vanity.

To close, I just want to quote the words of the Pope himself, who is remembering us the vanity as well as the futility of a world of economic wealth when there is no love.

"What hinders this humane and loving gaze towards our brothers and sisters? Often it is the possession of material riches and a sense of sufficiency, but it can also be the tendency to put our own interests and problems above all else. We should never be incapable of “showing mercy” towards those who suffer. Our hearts should never be so wrapped up in our affairs and problems that they fail to hear the cry of the poor. Humbleness of heart and the personal experience of suffering can awaken within us a sense of compassion and empathy" Benedict XVI, 3 November 2011.

Who can deny the goodness of this? According to certain economic doctrines, charity is unprofitable. And it is true. It must be unprofitable to be real charity! There is no love in profit, but self-centered egoism. And that cannot be truly Christian. That is why the most unchristian force of our day is capitalism. The love for material wealth has taken our minds, hiding the Spirit of goodness, making us evil. For every spit of economic wealth created in our current world, it becomes a bit more evil, soulless, cruel, and ultimately inhuman. That some people celebrate it is a matter of concern. For some pleasant years of material wealth, we are all casting our souls down to Hell.

The source of Pope Benedict's words is: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/lent/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20111103_lent-2012_en.html

Worldly Knowledge, the Gift of Fools

Daily we are invaded by doubt. Some tell us, "go to mass," and it works for some people. Others say, "read the Bible," and it works for others. Both work for me; however the direct reading of the Bible creates a stronger bond with the Truth, especially if you care more about the Truth than about social conventions. This doesn't make me an Evangelic, or nothing close to it, but I'm among the group of Christians that is too curious to simply take the priestly sermon for granted.

Today I want to make a comment on the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. The reason consists in my perennial debate with faithless friends, that putting all their trust in the knowledge of this world, ignore the case of other-worldliness. Some are modern rationalists whose faith is deposited in science and its recent technological achievements, and the impression of so much innovation in so little time have left them dazzled and deceived, making them think that any other kind of truth is impossible. Others are pessimists that do not recognize what is human in our condition, and think that we are just body and nothing more, like animals reinforced with this strange epiphenomenon called mind, leveling the holiness of our spirit to basic instincts. What has St. Paul to say about this?

Quoting Isaiah, St. Paul says of God: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." For how long have we been debating, fighting, even making wars, for what we take to be the scientific truth, the true knowledge of the world, just to be proven wrong the next generation? We boast of a knowledge we don't know if we have, trusting our senses and our limited capacities to judge, as if they were faultless. "Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:19, 20).

"Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification" (1 Cor. 2:6, 7). Who can deny that every single paradigm of knowledge that we have created has come and passed away? This doom of worldly knowledge, this recurrence of proving ourselves wrong, should be a lesson to humble ourselves and drop completely any attempt to know anything fully. Some contemporary philosophers of science claimed this, but, didn't St. Paul spoke of it two thousand years ago already? The wisdom imparted by Christianity, on the contrary, is a wisdom of faith; universal, unchallengeable by reasonable arguments, pure and simply human, spiritual, unpolluted by matter and body and logic. This cleanness from worldly knowledge, its support based strictly on faith, is what makes it perfect.

But where has this wisdom come from? St. Paul answers: "God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2:10, 11). What is the spirit? That which precisely makes us different from the rest of matter, and the animal kingdom. Worldly beings don't have self-conscience, because they have no spirit. The spirit is this metaphysical, otherworldly quality of humans to know themselves, and this self-conscience is what leads to know God. And from this knowledge beyond the wisdom of the world, humans have faith in contradistinction to any other living being.

To close this comment dedicated to worldly knowledge "Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly to God. For it is written, [in Job] 'He catches the wise in their craftiness,' and again [in Psalm 94] 'The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.' So let no one boast of men" (1 Cor. 3:18-21).

For those that like logic, picture for a moment a Creator of the world and all its rules, including logic. He who is before those rules cannot be dictated by those rules. He who created them is beyond them and above. If human minds can only be partially acquainted with those rules of the world, his acquaintance cannot reach the level of the Creator. But this is not so quite true. Our acquaintance through apprehension is limited to this world and its rules, but we are actually acquainted with the Creator through revelation and faith. That is, when He shows himself to us through the Spirit as St. Paul says, but it is folly and ridiculous to even pretend that we can decide to know him through science and reason at our initiative. The gift of the Truth of the Lord is bestowed by Him unto us, and to us only belongs faith in it. Anyone claiming truth through worldly knowledge is nothing but a fool, a clown in the eyes of God, like so many scientists, philosophers and intellectuals of our days. And sometimes, it must be granted, we fall into the temptation of belonging to this caste of universal fools.

Faith, Knowledge and Ideology

This was written as a note in my Blackberry phone in a lonely and long travel inside the New York subway; they are only sketchy ideas based on reflections caused by a recent argument I had with a professor in class. As such not much can be demanded from them.

The problem of ideology is urgent in social sciences. What we take to be ideological will set the limits and boundaries for the possibility of truthful knowledge. We assume that "ideological knowledge" is contrary to our idea of what knowledge is. Knowledge aims at truth while ideology is the mask of falsehood. But, is this true? Hasn't recent philosophy challenged the assumption that links knowledge with truth? I think us to be deceived if we don't agree with Nietzsche in his rejection of modern rationalist philosophy's pretensions. This leads us straight the dead end of yielding to the pessimist conclusion that any kind of knowledge must be ideological. But hasn't modern sciences proved many facts of the natural and social worlds to be true? So, there must be a connection between scientific knowledge and facts known to be true. These facts cannot vanish as fantastic representations just because we become skeptics of man's rational capacities.

What I conclude from this (which is, by no means, a novel conclusion at all) is that scientific knowledge only deals with truthful facts; that can only be its object. This calls for a statement of humility, because it implies that knowledge cannot grasp the Truth in its universal significance. Such thing as the Truth cannot be fully rationally apprehended. Because a thing like the Truth demands full knowledge of the totality of the object, and this cannot be reached, then we have to adjust to concrete and limited truthful facts. Ideology becomes the boundary of knowledge when we recognize that any rational knowledge that aims or pretends in reaching a final and absolute truth must be ideological and must be betraying the initial quest for truthful knowledge. This have been the pervasive spirit of many modern theories, particularly in social sciences; however not infrequently natural scientist fall in the same error.

Here faith comes into our problem. The object of faith is the Truth in its whole meaning. Whatever aims at reaching a discourse that deals with the totality of the whole truth must be an act of faith. Here we must attempt the next set of boundaries: the difference between faith and ideology, or if there is no difference at all.

The problem with faith is that it cannot be rationally explained without losing the inherent meaning of what it is, i.e. rational knowledge cannot know faith. One of the problems of many intelligent men that lack any sense of faith is that they cannot understand it without attaching to it an ideological origin. This was the problems men like Voltaire, Feuerbach, Marx, Einstein, Russell (however not Nietzsche) were condemn to have. Because the object and content of faith is the absolute Truth, whatever it might be, and because knowledge cannot reach that level of understanding under any circumstance, they use different rational explanations to give content and reason to what really is an abyss of in-comprehension and ignorance on their part. The knowledgeable atheist man doesn't have the experience of faith (I will later explain how I think they do but under ideological forms); ergo for them it is as hard and insufferable to give it credit just as it is hard and insufferable for the brutish and ignorant man to understand knowledge and coherent reason, or for the born blind the concept of color.

The relation between faith and knowledge is analogous to the relation between knowledge and ideology. Faith sets boundaries for knowledge, as knowledge sets boundaries for faith. In this sense it is naïve, or awkward to have a faith that challenges well known truthful facts, just as it is naïve and arrogant to deny the human experience of faith in a universal Truth using limited, concrete and short-sided truthful facts. This division was already exposed by St. Paul in theology and explored by Kant in philosophy. In this sense faith and knowledge can be both allies, or at least respectful opponents in man's heart and mind. By understanding that factual knowledge is limited, however truthful, and that faith does not have to disclaim factual knowledge but give meaning and sense to human life, a man can both have faith and respect reason's discoveries, as the 17th century European scientists and philosophers seem to have done.

However we cannot be over optimistic; faith, just as knowledge, has a relation to ideology, and in the past it has been the source for a lot of ideology. But the boundaries between these two cannot be clearly seen. To what extend faith in an omnipotent God does not derive in submission to an absolute monarch, or in a vicious devotion to a priestly caste? The problem is not easy to solve, because at first sight it appears to give knowledge the upper hand in claiming that faith is ideological by necessity. A first good approximation to such a complex subject might be through St. Paul in Hebrews 11. There, a radical schism is posed between things of God and things of this world, because everything that pertains to God is not seen (that is, never perceived through the body senses); hence it can never fit as a truthful fact, nor subject to knowledge. But the many examples of prophets given by St. Paul show one thing: trust. Man's capacity to trust, to accept something without proofs of it (as when a man accepts a promise from a friend) lies in the heart of the matter. If we take our relation to God to be a friendly relation (even more, the ultimate friendly relation), then we trust in his promise, and because of this we have faith, i.e. without knowledge. We take this promise to be the supreme Truth, without which the truthful facts would seem like ghosts and shades in a world without purpose. In this particular sense faith gives food for knowledge, as it makes the absolute Truth the spring of all other factual truths. So that when Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" (John 18:38), Jesus silence makes sense out of the impossibility of proving with rational speech what can only be grasped by faith. Jesus had already given the answer before Pilate asked him: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37); Jesus is the truthful fact of the universal Truth, and only faith can grasp that apparently incoherent notion. This explains Jesus' silence. Pilate's business was administering justice according to the Roman law; that is, according to the most rationally codified legal system of the times in the Mediterranean. Precisely because Jesus truth was a universal statement, it did not deal with the truthful facts that a judge like Pilate can accept in a court; the reason of why he says to the Jews "I find no guilt in him" (John 18:38).

But the answer of the Jews headed by the priests is also enlightening; their religion did not allow them to crucify or execute Jesus, but they found a loop in their beliefs by pressing the Roman law to kill him. Jesus had been preaching against some prominent "interests groups" in Judea, and they wanted to eliminate him from the scene, however unjust. The Jews were being subject to ideology. So what can be the difference between ideology and faith if the Jews' actions were moved by religious devotion? The truth is that religious devotion can turn into ideology when it is used to back particular worldly interests of powerful groups. Faith is the authentic and deeply personal experience of a metaphysical connection with God. This escapes reason, but it cannot be considered ideology because it also escapes ideological worldly purposes.

Just as faith can become the base for ideology, so the same with knowledge. Philosophical and scientific systems that aim at explaining the totality of the human condition are very well used for repressive reasons when it is taken to be the Truth, of which the Marxist ideology seems the most prominent recent case (but also the European divine right of the kings), as well as when it tries to erase man's inclination for faith. The boundaries between the three are never well fixed, because knowledge is always unstable and fallible, faith cannot be apprehended by the pure mind, and ideology hides in its most obscure and mendacious forms.

But what also seems to be true is that men, as long as they live in this world, cannot depart from any of them, because on ideology social and political stability is built, from knowledge every technique and technology is constructed, and only through faith men can have the hope they need to bear the miseries of worldly existence.

Open Conservatism

Having the experience of living in the United States, and hearing daily where the conservative grass-root movements stand on issues, has led me to question my identity as a conservative. The first thing that I have discovered is that conservatism is anything but an homogeneous group, or set of political convictions. Starting with me I realized that I can't agree with most of the cantankerous rhetoric coming from the right of the Republican Party. Most of what they say is not possible, showing only political naivete and complete lack of understanding of where we are historically. But also, of most of what is being said on the right I feel almost like an instinctive revulsion. The reason for this is because they show a stubborn and relentless intolerance toward what any other person might say; and that is not how you play the game of democracy.

My first complete divergence with contemporary conservatism lies mostly in their position on economics and fiscal policy. Yes, I agree that a balanced budget and a controlled-size of government bureaucracy are good goals; that rampant spending and growing centralized government might cripple the economy and eventually threaten the republican freedoms. But then, I don't understand why is it that this is called conservatism. What is it to be preserved? A balanced budget and controlled debt has no moral meaning or significance at all. I haven't heard that these can be morally problematic in the texts of any of the classical moral philosophers since Plato. For practical and utilitarian reasons I might agree with the idea of a balanced budget; but why is this conservative? Where is the moral value behind this idea? What original society is being preserved? These questions led me to the conclusion that what they call "fiscal conservatism" is nothing but an euphemism. Sometimes we have to spend, and sometimes we have to safe, depending on the historical context, the need of society and the level of antagonisms of the social classes. Of course we don't want a broke republic; not even liberals want that. So why on Earth calling it conservatism?

There is an answer to this questions: that the idea of a "small government" dates back from an idyllic past in the development of capitalism in which every individual was unhindered to pursue their businesses freely and without government intervention, and that this was a free and happy society. A first look at those years shows that this idea is a fantasy; capitalism grew out of the misery of a lot of people (and it is my impression that misery undermines freedom and human happiness). But it couldn't have been the other way around; wealth on one side and misery on the other is the only way the first accumulation of capital is possible for the next generations to make it grow more. A second and more scientific look: the growth of capital has been parallel with a growth of the government's size, because the amount of wealth created every generation over the previous one is reflected on the augmentation of the government's resources to increase its strength; and also because the government has been the way in which many in the proletariat lines have found the means to avoid utter and humiliating exploitation. As capitalism makes the proletariat grow, the state grows with it.

So far the "fiscal conservative" rests on generalizations and a misconceived look toward history. If we are to defend a balanced budget it is for strict reasons of utility; there is no moral principle behind it. As I said before: sometimes we spend, and sometimes we safe; there is nothing conservative about it.

The real reason why I claim to be a conservative is because I have a somehow romanticized vision of traditions. This is linked with my religious faith expressed through the Catholic Church. In this sense there are traditions that I think are better to be preserved and that the government has a duty to protect and promote, because whether we like it or not, peaceful social interaction between human beings rests more on traditions than on the coercive strength of the state. The latter usually kicks in when the former is disintegrating. And what the "fiscal conservatives" don't understand, and don't want to see, is that it was the growth of capitalism and its method of accumulation which has led to a vast disintegration of traditional life. The growth of government is nothing but a compensation in a society that no longer finds itself in the middle of big business. Both big business and its pursuit of wealth as well as big government and its pursuit of power are nothing but the consequence of that "idyllic small government society" the libertarians are trying to defend. So their position is utterly paradoxical.

There is another problem with what we call social conservatism (which I think is the only legitimate conservatism whatsoever). Capitalism, by destroying traditional life, especially in big urban areas, renders much of what is defended by religious faith as obsolete and inconvenient to the growth of capital. Capital doesn't care about sexual orientation, religious beliefs, family background, virtues or vices; it only cares about you doing your job in the time and the fashion expected. But this practical reality has its ideological face in liberalism and its quest to erase inherited traditions that bind the individual.

But then social conservatives have also a taste for the intolerant. They have interpreted their beliefs in moral virtue as the position of those that cast stones on the sinful one, and become nothing but pharisees. But I don't think it has to be that way.

This is the reason why I am defending something that I like to call "open conservatism": that is following and defending policies that aim at preserving and promoting the ancient traditions from which we've come, but never in a way that you should cast moral judgments on those particulars that do not follow our beliefs. This second clause is inherited from Christianity, and the idea that all human beings (individually and not in the enlightened abstraction called humanity) must be loved as you love yourself. The central idea is that we shall cast charity and not judgment on everyone, even those that pursue a life that according to our beliefs is questionable. In many passages of the Holy Scripture this philosophy is expressed. But I shall limit myself to quote John 8:7 in which Jesus prevents a mob from killing a prostitute and says to them "Let whoever is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone on her". The catch is that because none of us is free of sin, none has the legitimate authority to cast the stone of moral judgment on others. Jesus himself teaches how to be an open conservative, first by never denying the Laws of Moses (Matthew 5:17), and second by offering his hand and his love to the sinful (which are, basically, all of us).

Open conservatism can be a polite way of defending tradition by never pretending to trample over the inclinations of others. Our attitude toward the most radical of liberals and anarchists must be that of intellectual disagreement, but also of sincere love for them. If we have to cast our votes, we rather do it for tradition; if we have to claim the truth of Jesus, we will do it without pride; if we have to face another person that thinks and acts contrary to our beliefs, we shall embrace that person as a brother or sister in life. But the contemptuous conservatism that aims at rejecting other people's lifestyles is contrary to the spirit of the teachings of Christianity, and is built on the false assumption that we are the ultimate owners of the truth from which we can judge. Only God has the entire truth and hence just capacity to judge; precisely because we don't have it, we can't make a science out of morality, but simply to have faith in it.

My central point is that we can be conservatives without being pharisees. We can make friendship with those that oppose our ideas radically. We can even spend and enjoy time with them. In this sense tolerance is not enough; tolerance is just polite contempt. What we need is to improve our capacity to love and care about everyone we meet; to debate with them honestly, sincerely, and without traces of hatred and remorse for their different world outlook. And also to invite them to approach our differences in the same way. Conservatism can do this without betraying its convictions and its faith; we just have to take the word of Jesus seriously.

My Statement on Gay Marriage

The law by virtue of being it I must respect. And it is expected from everyone else in a free society to do the same; because only the law has supreme earthly authority. Even in autocratic regimes the figure of the autocrat is the origin of the law. I will skip the problem of what would be a legitimate origin of the law, and just state as principle that the law, whatever it happened to exist according to the common consent of those being subject to it, remains the supreme earthly authority. But the Church (of Rome) has the monopoly of my conscience, the place where only God reaches. The law can only ask from me to obey it, but it cannot claim my conscience, my self. Recently gay marriage was approved in the State of New York, the place where I presently reside. And for the previous mentioned reasons I respect gay marriage by being sanctioned according to the law of this land, and having supreme earthly authority. But I cannot concede in favoring it in my conscience, because that part of my self belongs to my devoted faith in the Church; and the Church does not recognize as warranted the union of same-gender couples.

However I cannot judge others' love. Doing that is always deeply unchristian. The authority to judge others' love, and weather it is right or wrong, belongs only to God. That is why the inclination of gays is not my concern nor does it demands my opinion on the subject, because simply I cannot know better, because I am no better. My opinion only rests in regarding the institution of gay marriage and it is guided by the Holy Doctrine of the Catholic Church. For that reason I don't support with my conscience what the law forces me to respect nonetheless (and I willfully do respect it): the institution of gay marriage. But the judgment of others' love goes beyond my reach, as it is well explained by the Pauline theology from the teachings of Jesus.

The difficulty in explaining this is that our society has become to fond of judging others, coming from every orientation in politics, ethics and religion. The difference between the judgment of a court of law is that it rests upon the earthly authority of the law. If the law has a moral content, it is not morality which makes the law binding, but the law which makes morality binding. In itself the only moral court where the individual stands is that upon God. But this difference goes completely unnoticed by many who think that an opinion regarding a subject of ethics or morality, almost like by necessity, implies a judgment on those others that break what we consider to be the moral norms. This must be rejected, because there is a difference between a statement of morality, where basically the subject states what he believes to be the frontier between right and wrong, and another one is having the authority to point at some other person and rightfully say "you did wrong". Morality is a claim of the self in the his relation to God, but never to other men. To other men only law and conventions are binding, but the deep meaning of human morality lies hidden inside the conscience to a level that only God can pierce.

To put it more simply; when a person breaches the law, he goes to court. The law is recited to the person, but the person still remains innocent. In order for any judgment to be imposed on the person, it must be shown that the person actually broke the law. The sole speaking of the law does not make the person guilty. What makes the person guilty is the judgment based on the law. As it stands the law is just a statement of will (general will if you may) but it does not finger any guilty. It just creates the possibility and basis for the guilty. But the actual materialization of the guilty emerges from the judgment. And the judgment is only warranted when it has been proven that the person did break the law somehow (if there are enough doubts, it will always be better for the person to walk free). But with morality we face an insolvable problem: it is impossible to prove that inside another person's conscience there has been a real breach in the moral norms. A breach in convention can be proven, as well as with the law; but never a fault in morality, because we have no way of knowing what happens inside the depth of another human's mind (heart, soul, conscience). That is why blaming another for hypocrisy is most of the time a very bold judgment.

Morality does no warrant anyone to judge other people. Christianity teaches so, and the philosophical basis were built by St. Paul already a long time ago. When I state what I think to be right or wrong is a moral statement, but it does not imply a judgment (however many do that, and others interpret it that way). A true Christian morality will always point the difference between right and wrong, but stay there as when the courts of law have still not passed a judgment on a defendant. Because the only and truly possible authority in morality is God, the only force in the universe conceivable to penetrate inside the human heart and know their deepest truths. I think this more than enough to justify and explain my previous statement in gay marriage: why is it possible for me to oppose gay marriage and gay love as concepts contrary to Christian morality and still welcome any person without distinction of sexual inclination, without remorse or judgment upon them. Morality cannot be used as a weapon to judge without losing completely its true meaning, but as the relation between our individual consciences and God. The Church states the maxims of Christian morality, but it has no authority to produce any particular judgment on anyone. So the same with all of us.

1 Corinthians 4

In order to show that Christian religion is not about judging and chastising people for their actions; that the idea of guilt is not a tool to influence and dominate the weak willed by some corrupt priests; and that corrupt priests and clergy as well as hypocrite believers are not inherent of the Christian faith, but part of the sinful nature of the human condition (that is shared by every human being with the only exception of the Virgin Mary), St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians says:

"(1) This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. (2) Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. (3) I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. (4) My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. (5) Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God."

"(6) Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. (7) For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"

Guilt has no meaning in Christianity without forgiveness and redemption. It is not about a faith of self-flagellating people but of humble acceptance of our wrongs and hope in forgiveness through God's (and human) love. Those that believe that they can use Christian faith to judge and chastise others are deeply flawed in their interpretation of the message of Christ, and only give a weapon for those that attack our faith in the name of misconceived ideas of progress and freedom. Christianity is a faith of love and hope, that can only be achieved when we admit and start by our humble position in this life and not boasting at gifts that are given to us by God. St. Paul, with his respective coherence, tells us that even judging ourselves is flawed because only God can penetrate fully within the dark purposes of our spirit. If we don't even know ourselves fully, how do we expect to judge others that we are so far from knowing to heart? Christianity demands full tolerance to the wrongs of others; an extremely difficult feat to achieve; sainthood is the quality of those that reach it.

The Idiot's Wisdom

We can approach God in many ways. We can understand Jesus message and mission from many sources. We can grasp Him in our thoughts. We can have the feeling since we are born. We can get inspired by the martyrs. And we can get in touch by the Bible, or be enlightened by a miracle. God speaks to us in the most unexpected fashions, and it is up to us if we are willing to hear His voice or not. One man that I think understood the Gospels of the Lord more than anyone else in his time was the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. With "guilt" in Crime and Punishment, "nihilism" in The Damned, "sanctity" and "greed" in The Brothers Karamazov, and surprisingly with "naivety" in The Idiot, this Russian novelists grasps in very simple and unexpected moments what seems to be the whole message of the Gospels of Christianity. What do we do when the most impressive religious revelations take form through art, and literature? In a civilization that turn its back on God, and no longer has the force to hope, Dostoyevsky seems to me the author of a rebirth of Christianity. I live you with the particular passage that caught my attention this time:

"There is joy for a mother in her child's first smile, just as God rejoices when from heaven he sees a sinner praying to Him with his whole heart. (...) The essence of religious feeling doesn't depend on reasoning, and it has nothing to do with wrongdoing or crime or atheism. There is something else there and there always will be, and atheists will always pass over it and will never be talking about that" (1969: 240).

God, Jesus and Logic

It is common to hear atheists defend their unbelief in God by bringing logic or reason, and similar vaguely used terms brought up in a conversation. It happened to me recently and I tried to explain what I usually think about this use of logic rules to try to unprove God. I'm aware that such conversations and use of logic is a thing of amateurs, because the notion of logic itself breaks the head of the most prominent philosophers. That is, not even the great names in the subject agree on everything. However I don't want to make this note on a debate of logic, but on certain remarks on the possible understanding of God. For this reason I'm going to use logical thinking to demonstrate why logic cannot be used to test God.

God is broadly believed to be the Creator of the world. Plenty of metaphors are used to describe this role He plays in the existence of all things, by portraying Him as the Architect of the Universe, the Consciousness of the World, the Universal Legislator, etc. The prime element is that, if we admit that he is the Creator, then he drafted the rules of the world he created and which existence comes only after His act. This argument goes for the atheists, so follow me closely. Independently of your faith or lack of it, if we reasonable accept as an intellectual experiment, that something like God is the only thing from which the Universe could have spring from, then He is previous to the rules that determine the world He created. These rules are a posteriori in existence. They didn't play any role in God's presence itself. This, my friends, includes logic. The order of the Universe is determined by many laws, and some of them are formal rules of logic. Because we are beings necessarily bound to the rules of this world in which we live in, it is impossible for us to think outside the most basic notions that structure it. That which transcends the world, that lies beyond its rules, that's precisely God. Then how can we even conceive an explanation of the nature of that that is totally outside our sphere of reference? Thinking otherwise is the biggest of illusions brought about by that callous sin called pride.

God as a concept cannot be debated. It is a naive discussion. However, the experience of Jesus Christ can. Why? Because he walked this Earth and his life was bound to its rules... to a certain extend. There are only two assumptions that we have to use in discussing Jesus Christ. Or we acknowledge that he is the son of God, or we don't. If we don't, then we can legitimately debate Jesus Christ on strictly historical and rational terms. But if we do, then we have before us a dilemma. Jesus is both a man, so we can judge him as such, but he also shares with God in His universal nature, so there is something that runs away from our limited understanding. So in Jesus the limitations of the particular man are overcome by the universality of God. As human beings all of us are particulars, fragments of the universe, and we cannot but see the universe from our fragmented peace of the world, whereas God is universal and eternal. Put it from this perspective human beings as particulars are totally alienated from the eternal. But if we acknowledge Jesus divine background, then God as a universal an eternal being becomes part of the human experience. Human beings and God's being become united, linked, in the body of Jesus Christ, and that's the whole point of his mission: the final union between men and the Lord. And last but not less important, if Jesus as a man shares also the nature of the eternal in his same body, then as such, as God-made-man, there is nothing that he could not have done. The only way of debating Jesus' miracles, and Jesus infinite love for humanity, is by stating a priori a totally human nature, and putting aside any divine background.

Jesus Christ is a synthesis between the universal and eternal of God, that embodies and fills the whole universe and beyond (because He is previous to the existence of the universe itself), and the particular condition of human beings in their subjective experience. Only as such he can be our savior. Only as such his message can be understood. If we deny this, Jesus' mission and teachings become blurred and historically inconsistent. It is up to you, as a person, to choose which side of the story you believe in.

The Wisdom

While reading the Bible earlier today, I caught a beautiful passage from The Book of Wisdom, also called The Wisdom of Salomon. It is one of the deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which means that it is strictly Christian canon, and it is not included in the Jewish Torah. The passage is the first chapter of the book and goes as follows, and then I will make a comment:

"Love righteousness, you rulers of the earth, think of the lord with uprightness, and seek him with sincerity of heart; because he is found by those who do not put him to test, and manifests himself to those who do not distrust him. For perverse thoughts separate men from God, and when his power is tested, it convicts the foolish; because wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin. For a holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit, and will rise and depart from foolish thoughts, and will be ashamed at the approach of unrighteousness.

"For wisdom is kindly spirit and will not free a blasphemer from the guilt of his words; because God is witness of his inmost feelings, and a true observer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. Because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said; therefore no one who utters unrighteous things will escape notice, and justice, when it punishes, will not pass him by. For inquiry will be made into the counsels of an ungodly man, and a report of his words will come to the Lord, to convict him of his lawless deeds; because a jealous ear hears all things, and the sound of murmuring does not go unheard. Beware then of useless murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret word is without result, and a lying mouth destroys the soul.

"Do not invite death by the error of your life, not bring on destruction by the works of your hands; because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them; and the dominion of Hades is not on earth. For righteousness is immortal.

"But ungodly men by their words and deed summon death; considering him a friend they pined away, and they made a covenant with him, because they are fit to belong to his party" (Wisdom 1:1-16).

The first thing that this passage presents us is the problem of faith. God cannot be put to test. Such pretension inevitably brings the mark of unrighteousness, because implicitly we put ourselves above God, and him below as an object of study. It cannot but be called pride. Those that stubbornly believe in science, and deny God because of lack of proofs are these, that trusting too much in their bodily senses, deny what can only bee seen with the eyes of the soul; and instead of admitting humbly the limits of their capacity, assume the most foolish of behaviors. Hence, they are unwise, and unfit for the knowledge of God. This seems almost like a curse to me.

The second paragraph tells us something of the "nature" of God. He is aware of everything that happens inside our consciousness. If he is the Creator and the Force from where everything living springs, he is the consciousness of the world, which means that our individual's consciousness are in His. Whatever we do, whatever we say and think, our relation with God is so intimate, that only he can trace the origin of our actions, emotions and thoughts, so as to judge their righteousness. So as to know if we are blamable or forgivable for what we do and say. The fragment shows God as a perfect universal judge of all that is human. At the end of our lives we stand trial, not so much for our concrete actions, but for the internal state of our soul from which those actions sprang. In more philosophical terminology, of the principles of our will. Only because of this the Lord can understand us, even more than we understand ourselves. This is what makes the Lord all forgiving, for the Lord recognizes our falls and separates them from real unrighteousness, which here is characteristic of atheists. This last point is what connects with the first paragraph.

The third paragraph explains why God is all forgiving. Here death is not seen as the departure of soul and body. The promise of eternal life for all living things explains death not as the end, but as a turning point between bodily life on earth and eternal life in Heaven. Because he hears and knows everything that takes place within our soul, and because he loves life and wants to make it eternal, God's judgment of a rightful soul is immortality. Curious enough the mention of the realm of Hades, a pagan deity, is seen as an end. This end, which is identified by not being from this world, precisely by the lack of world at all, is the result of an unrighteous life. Again, only an end is reserved for those that deny God, the most unrighteous of all.

And why are they unrighteous? Last paragraph explains: because their pride, as represented in the first paragraph, has clouded their souls, and they no longer distinguish what is right, precisely because what is right is and springs from the Lord. Because they are ungodly, they are unrighteous, and the promise of eternal life is denied to them. Precisely because they are condemning themselves to extinction, to real infinite death, they are absolutely unwise.

However, and this is the Good News of Jesus coming, as long as we are living, there is always a chance to convert into the righteous, and be saved.

In a World of Uncertainty only Doubt is Warranted

I doubt magic, I doubt fairies, I doubt dragons, I doubt warlocks. I doubt the media, I doubt reporters, I doubt progress, I even doubt Human Rights. I doubt economics, I doubt free market, I doubt science, I doubt Einstein, I doubt socialism, I doubt the State, I doubt liberalism, I even doubt social conservatism. I doubt Bush, I doubt Obama, I doubt New York, I doubt Berlin, I doubt Paris, I doubt Beijing, I doubt philosophy, I doubt Kant, I doubt materialism, and I even doubt family.

Of the many things that I seem to doubt, of all this world filled with uncertainties, only one thing, and one thing only seems uncontroversially true for me, and it is this:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten, that is of the essence of the Father.

God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father, by Whom all things came into being, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

Who for us humanity and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was made human, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.

By whom He took body, soul, and mind, and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.

He suffered, was crucified, was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven with the same body, and sat at the right hand of the Father.

He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father, to judge the living and the dead; of His kingdom there is no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the uncreated and the perfect; Who spoke through the Law, prophets, and Gospels; Who came down upon the Jordan, preached through the apostles, and lived in the saints.

I believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and Holy Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgment of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life. Amen

This I don't doubt, and it seems the only thing worthy of not doubting in this life, for the rest is opinion and uncertainty, not worthy of giving credit or paying too much heed.
There is something else that I don't doubt. I don't doubt history, and I don't doubt the existence of evil.