Rebel Souls

For it is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness. – Psalm 18:28

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. -- Psalm 119:105

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life -- Proverb 6:23

The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all his innermost parts. – Proverbs 20:27

Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin. – Proverbs 21:4

Christians and most other theists believe that man’s moral compass derives its usefulness from alignment with the Divine Nature.  We know what is right and what is wrong because our dark souls have been enlightened by revelation, by the spark of the Spirit who has touched us. 

When we are condemned by the moralizing, atheistic Pharisees of today for our backward, primitive thinking and our superstitious clinging to religion, on what grounds, exactly do they decide that we are wrong and they are right?  If a person says that he only believes what he can see and prove, well, fine.  Prove I am wrong, or, if you prefer, prove you are right.  It can’t be done.  Every proof I’ve ever seen is just a sales pitch, an offer of the scientistic salesman’s vision of a better world.  Marx had nothing to back up his belief system.  He just dressed his little scheme in the clothing of a scientific analysis of history.  Keynesians economists, like climate scientists, create elaborate, mathematical models to justify and promote their very limited representations of reality.   And that’s the problem.  Every political solution, every scientific theory deals not with the universe but with the template.  What we call the universe is not the universe but our “artist’s representation”.  It’s good, in many cases, and mostly quite useful, but it is not the is that is. 

The only possibility of knowing things as they are is revelation.  Most of us most of the time don’t care about quantum mechanics.  I’m generally more interested in getting through the day without turning into the Michael Douglas character in Falling Down.  Revelation gives us truth, and it also, if we are willing to allow it, sheds light upon our motives.  It shows us when we are pursuing an end because it is true and good, and when we have a desire for personal gain or glory tied up in it.  The revelation in God’s moral law, written in stone or upon our hearts, enables us to look out for our neighbor’s good as well as our own. 

If we have and follow this moral law, we have no need for the vast government oversight and regulation that intrudes every moment into our lives, for the ivory-tower academic, centralized control of our money and economy, for alleged scientific solutions to social problems.  But the wicked are illuminated by pride and arrogance of attitude.  They have a commanding knowledge of their map and thus believe they know how to get across the river.  Hey, look, it’s narrow here.  That must be the best place, right?  Disregard the other factors – e.g., depth and velocity – and it will not end well. 

I’m willing to give idiots like Obama and Krugman and Michael Mann the benefit of the doubt.  Al Gore, not so much.  If a person is walking in darkness, I really don’t expect them to understand that their beliefs are simply functions of their own twisted motivations, their need for acceptance and validation, their feelings of inadequacy, their irrational fears, their weaknesses and perversions.  They are sad, sick, petty people driven to grasp for attention and acclamation. 

Yet, because they have a limited understanding, because they lack revelation knowledge, they are convinced they can tell us what we ought to do.  Abortion ought to be safe and legal – so long as one ignores how most women get pregnant and whose life is being ended.  What goes on between “consenting adults” should be private – so long as we ignore the damage done to that most basic unit of a stable society, the family.  Everybody ought to have a right to go to college, to have a nice car, food, clothing, housing, etc. – so long as we ignore who is really paying for it.  We are not allowed to judge people by their behavior and their vile, destructive lifestyles because to do so would be racist or homophobic.    We ought to accept multiculturalism and ignore the violence, lawlessness, and insanity of it. 

These modern Pharisees are wrong because they are blind to the motive that underlies all their schemes and plans and utopian illusions:  they hate Christ and will not have this Man rule over them.

But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, We do not want this man to reign over us. (Luke 19:14)