A Living Thing


“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

― G.K. Chesterton, "The Everlasting Man"

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Dear Kate,

Obedient people are courageous, creative, even combative people.

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him," another quote from Chesterton I could have used today.

When you want something you get ingenious about getting it.  When you want something badly enough you would die for it.  You don't live by docilely echoing with your No what is disallowed, but resoundingly affirming with your Yes what is given us in Jesus.  Yes, and Yes, and Yes.

A friend was always voicing to me his support to a certain tyrannical regime, thinking that my being nuanced about the matter was merely neutral, too indifferent for his moral certitude.  Last week I asked him, if it comes to that, whether he would fight in the army for this establishment against what he would consider his own enemies.

"They wouldn't want me," he replied. "I am too old."

He knew I was hypothetically speaking.  He knew he was being evasive, deceiving before anyone else himself.  I pointed that out to him.  Also that he was a hypocritical coward (not that there is any other kind).

Sheep to the Great Shepherd are not sheepish, anyone who's been taking in the full story from Genesis to Revelation should have no problem not missing that.  To anyone who says we should follow public health order during COVID (or any order in general) just because, without thoughtful reflection, deep discussion, and prayerful discernment,  I would answer:

1) That's just because you are still in a very comfortable position to pontificate platitude, that the situation isn't yet encroaching on your backyard, worming into your dollar bills.  Talk to me again when you are not driving in your private vehicle, working from home high up in your overheated apartment, mansion with overstocked pantry, every password to the sanctuaries of your heart protected with ironclad, and are willing to come down to walk beside the widowed and orphaned, defenseless and dispossessed, take in the many alternative realities, storied presence of your neighbors, whom you proclaim to love, and then---


I observe the public health orders, and do not suggest anyone to disrespect our leaders.

What I am speaking against are those asking me to stop taking transit for the welfare of humanity, for the sake to expedite their lives "back to normal," people who would otherwise never take transit to begin with, pandemic or not.  Hypocritical cowards.

What I am also against is being sheepish, thoughtless, unwise, and to confuse discernment with disobedience, ham-handedly prescribing technocratic solutions as if they are necessarily the manifestation of the power of God's saving grace, necessarily channeled in those specific ways.  Like we know the perfect will of God and are authorized to administer it now because we are educated enough for the mighty task.

Make no mistake, the fact that the malls are allowed to open but not the churches is a difficult decision based on the current cultural climate, political atmosphere of our time, the collective vision of human destiny according to our very particular demography, the zeitgeist in which a proximate justice, a close-enough goodness, a workable order are tentatively achieved and tenuously sustained.  We are in a history in flux, a story still unveiling, and for me to accept what I would otherwise find unintelligible is to say Christ is at play and I must, before anything else, wait on Him, observe, and learn.  My submission must necessarily entail inquisition and continuous conversation with Him and my fellow human beings.

If we can land ourselves on the moon we should have no problem coming up with a workable way to safely and humbly land ourselves in the sanctuaries we deem vital to our health and ultimate destiny.  The malls are open.  We made it work.  It wasn't perfect, but hell, as shoppers, we tried.  We ate good the last few days, despite all.  We don't open the church because we don't deem "religious activities" essential, not tangible like food, not useful like tools, that's all, let alone saying they have anything to do with our destiny.  In another culture, another time, we might have no trouble discerning how twisted our logic is, but as it is now we see the twisting is to bend the other way.

I can obey, not insisting on any twisting whichever way.  But there is no just because for this sheep of the Great Shepherd.

"Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination."  Yet another quote from Chesterton I could have used.

We might come out of COVID, but we still might not know what tunnel we are talking about.

Yours, Alex

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