Boundaries Part III – The Characteristics of Boundarylessness

Back to Part II – The Genesis of our Lunacy

There are two things that happen when you commit to removing Gods created boundaries from the world in an effort to get rid of Him: the first is that it makes everything simply unpleasant, the second thing is that it makes everything an insane religious fight. To the extent a society or people decide to remove God’s boundaries they will experience equivalent measures of both of the following.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.”

The lesser problem with trying to erase God from our minds by eliminating His boundaries from the universe is that boundaries are nice; which makes this endeavor decidedly not fun. It’s a sober and serious work, fit only for the iron-hearted, since it means the pleasurable distinctions, and therefore the pleasures of life, are eradicated.

Incidentally this is a key reason why we attempt to remove boundaries only when we have sufficient numbers on our side—because without a group (or mob, or a fanatic leader) pushing us onward when we grow timid we’d never have the courage to fully sabotage ourselves and vote for misery. Left to our own devices we might loudly trumpet how there’s no God, but we’d follow it up with going to a comedy club and laughing at the differences between men and women. Or we might settle for having a delicious dinner, and happily settle down to bed with a full belly. Or worse, we might see on our TV the squared jaw scientist who’s produced the latest medical discovery, and right then and there decide to throw in our lot with him and romp through God’s sandbox together, until one day we came out in favor of Intelligent Design. That’s why we need each other, because it’s only as part of a group that we have the strength to agree there’s no difference between men and women. Only with help can we be shamed into believing food should be nothing more than dirt flavored tofu because of obesity, or organic, or cruelty free reasons.
 

But regardless of the crowd, with the help of our fellow man or without, it stands true that tearing down the boundaries necessarily turns the dance of life into a dreary mechanical shuffle. Walking the road where pleasure is forbidden out of spite quickly turns ones existence into a grim and colorless death march.

And that’s only the first problem of trying to push creation around. The second is much, much worse.

“For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.”

Once the realization that we’re finite and incapable of moving the boundaries hits, a strange and unsurprising thing happens: we become insane. I don’t mean the word colloquially either, I mean it clinically—we begin to deny the fundamental reality around us. Once we can no longer pretend a man is invincible, say when we come face to face with a hungry wolf or a grumpy bear, reality breaks in and reminds us just how much bigger it is than us. Whatever the event happens to be, hurricanes, fires, floods, droughts, storms, or even sunlight, we eventually feel enough pain that we’re forced to surrender the idea that we have the powers of God which are required to eliminate the boundaries and make the plan work. 

But rather than give up at this point and admit we are puny creatures who need to apologize already, we cling steadfastly to our pride and instead redefine what deity is. If we can’t individually be fully God, then we will settle for being partly God. We’ll begin to console ourselves with thoughts like, “there may be a limit to a single man, but collectively there is no limit to us.” Man by himself is nothing, mankind taken together is God.

(Aside: this means of course that our modern, secular humanism is exactly equivalent to pantheism, and it once again reinforces why there’s no such thing as atheism. Since boundaries are so powerful and wonderful that they cannot be denied, the argument is no longer over if they exist but who put them there. Our universe is so finely tuned and marvelous that it’s not a question of “did a god do that”, but “which God did that?” And because of our fallenness by god we’re not going to let that be Him when it can be us.
Here again this is proven out by experience. As much as the nihilist may say he believes we are accidents devoid of meaning and prolonging ourselves by chance, he doesn’t really believe it. To even utter the words are to disprove them. That’s why when the philosophers pointed out to each other that Nihilism gets exactly nowhere and the boundaries were still there, the solution was to shrug, pass the booze, and revert to Pantheism.)

So Pantheism is the result of a determination to eliminate the evidence of God, and that in turn leads to the two closely related side effects of delusion and violence.

Delusion becomes necessary because the only practical way to make Pantheism work is to retreat into our minds. Reality becomes no longer that what persists when we close our eyes, but that which we agree on. It’s not a thing pressing in on us from outside, it’s what our minds choose to accept, like how a pick up soccer game doesn’t happen unless we make a point of showing up. Belief creates reality. Boundaries only exist because we recognize them. If we all chose to disregard an obsolete boundary (like the definition of marriage) then it ceases to exist. If we recognize a boundary it’s because we find it nice to, because we choose to. As an extreme example, gravity pulls us down not because it’s a property of matter, but because we don’t want to float into space. Because we don’t want to float away, therefore we don’t. Laws are a convenience.
Our words serve as a lubricant in this delusion, helping build up the wall in our minds to keep reality at bay. Words are not grounded on objective things, but are only the names we agree on, which allows us to more easily pretend like we’re in control. So long as we remain committed to breaking all the things God stamped His image on, we will be forced to break our ability to reason, communicate coherently, and see the world soberly. To free ourselves of God we must become God, and to do that requires us to become delusional. 

Violence follows from this because it must. Left to itself the mind would come to rest and accept reality as it is—it’s only with a continual application of force that an alternate, contradictory reality can be imposed over it. As a result the pantheist is restless, he cannot stop moving, cannot afford to give ground or his work will be undone. The inner violence and need to apply force everywhere spills outward and his job becomes making sure everyone agrees on the reality he desires so that his desired reality will materialize. Lions are dangerous because some people believe they are, all we need to do to make lions tame is convert or eliminate the people who believe otherwise. People are poor because the greedy don’t want to share. Eliminate them and we can all be wealthy.

As Doug Wilson points out, the pantheist is likened to a man holding a beach ball under muddy waters. He wants to pretend the ball doesn’t exist because he can’t see it, even though he’s forced to exert pressure on the ball to keep it from becoming visible again. That’s our predicament.

And with that, we’re in sight of the runway.

Continue to Part IV

Boundaries Part II – The Genesis of Our Insanity

Back to Part I – Foundational Principles

“Well" you say, "you may’ve proven to me that I believe in boundaries, but I certainly don’t admit to believing in God.” Ah, but you do. It’s more accurate to say you dislike or hate God. Allow me to explain why. 

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’”

After creation God set up one last boundary for Adam—a moral one—and warned him to not trespass it or their harmonious relationship would be shattered and God would permanently withdraw His blessings of life and happiness.
This arrangement seems cruel or impossible to obey because we are on the opposite side of the fall, but on Adams side this boundary was an unalloyed good that allowed him to experience the joy of obedience. In every other matter Adam was free to do what seemed good to him, which rendered voluntary obedience impossible. It was only when God made a prohibition that Adam could feel the pleasure of submission. The command not to eat was a new kind of goodness, a new way for Adam to be happy. Because boundaries are good things that bring us joy.

“And unto Adam He said ‘Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’”

But rather Adam chose to defy rather than obey. He broke our relationship with God by consciously and deliberately eating the forbidden fruit, and plunged all creation into misery, ruin, and death. When his actions were politely pointed out by His Creator, the Author of Life, Adam responded by blaming God for the rebellion, arguing if He hadn’t put the woman here everything would be just fine. He knew he’d offended a loving, innocent, personal God, ruined everything and forfeited life, but he couldn’t own up to it. And this is the genesis of our insanity. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shown it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

Ever since then we’ve been angry at God, knowing we’re in the wrong and unwilling to say sorry, finding it easier to just pretend we didn’t offend Him because He doesn’t exist. We want to push Him out of our minds entirely, and this continued obstinacy makes Him even angrier at us, in turn making us even more desperate to forget Him—but it isn’t an easy thing to do since we’re being constantly reminded of Him by the physical world He put His fingerprints all over. The great immovable boundaries still testify to His might and power, His goodness and joy, and as much as we by nature like them, we also hate them because of our moral fallenness. It’s a little like breaking up with your boyfriend because you were cruel to him: you know deep down you were in the wrong, but rather than own up to it it’s easier to take down all those pictures of him and pretend it never happened.

In short, because we resent Him we also resent His created boundaries. We long to tear them all away, cast them aside, put them somewhere safe where they can no longer remind us of what we did.
And to this end we bring our power over the physical universe to bear. But there are some bad side effects of this plan.

Continue to Part III 

Boundaries Part I – A Proper Foundation

In this series of blog posts I attempt to explain everything about human civilization and its error using the lens of boundaries. Politics, philosophy, eternity, the universe—everything.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

There has always been a God, and at the beginning of time He went on a creating rampage, populating a mind-numbingly enormous universe full of the most diverse kinds of things imaginable. With a word He gave us a giant burning ball of plasma to light the solar system, endless stretches of salty waters and vast swaths of firm ground. He then made the living things, plants that reproduce according to their kind, birds, fish, animals, us. Each created thing was increasingly glorious, and each thing came with its own set of inherent properties.     

At the same time He was creating visible things He was also creating the invisible ones—the boundaries. Every new act came with a wall that kept the old thing separate from it, a new line of demarcation, a space between things preventing their transmutation. Each time God said “this!” He was concurrently saying “not that!” This is necessary because a thing is only itself because it’s not something else at the same time. I am a man, not a wooden podium, and were I to become a wooden podium, I would cease to be a man. A lion is inherently different than a rock. A plum tree isn’t a star.
 

This isn’t a particularly insightful thing to say, even children intuitively grasp that water isn’t air, animals aren’t earth. As adults we continually affirm not just the fundamental truth about boundaries, but our preference for them. Pendereski is ugly because his music lacks distinction, while Mozart is nice because his music doesn’t. So boundaries are quite literally the pillar on which existence sits, and we intuitively recognize and appreciate them.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth… And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to tend it and to keep it.”

And not only did God create all these wonderful things which can make us happy, but by dent of making us in His own image and giving us dominion over the world, He gave us the power to sort, categorize, and organize them. He’s purposely left the world “unfinished” and given us a shadow of His own creative power to make things more of what they are. As a result we’ve made corn many times more fruitful, watermelons seedless, and sheep wooly. We’ve made teeth straighter, athletes more dominant, and drinking water purer. Although each created thing was given a boundary, a line, and its fundamental nature remains fixed and inaccessible to us, we’ve nevertheless been able to shape things and make them more fruitful. By accepting things for what they are, submitting and agreeing with reality, our job has been to name and organizing things—and even a cursory glance at a skyscraper will reveal we’ve done well at it.

My point here is that it’s God Himself who’s behind the great, immovable, unshakable boundaries (everything from motion to mathematics) that separate things and keep them from bleeding into each other. By nature things have certain properties that just don’t change—and even if you could change them, the thing would stop becoming what it once was the moment you did. We can bombard silicon with other elements and make a microchip, but it stops being beach sand after we’re finished because everything only has a finite amount of elasticity before you run up against the hard barrier that separates things, the invisible laws which hold up our existence that just are.

I think that pretty well establishes my point, but let me say one more thing to the person who is still unconvinced, or the troll: you don’t actually disagree with me and we both know it. You know that 2+2=4, and that four can only mean the one thing, because if it also means five then it means absolutely nothing at all. You may even be willing to go so far as to say you deny these fundamental boundaries, but I’m willing to bet you don’t attempt to use your eyes to ingest bricks, your ears to breathe plasma, and your kidneys to make the rain fall. You, like everyone else, inherently appreciate boundaries, and give glory to God when you breathe the air He made for you to breathe, and speak with your vocal cords as He designed you to. You know full well that if we were to melt down or abolish all the distinctions which separate things the universe would cease to exist.

So with that as the lens by which we will view everything, we’re now ready to get at the fundamental problem of humanity.

Continue to Part II

The Case for Traditional Marriage

Whether it admits to this or not, our culture views marriage as a contract two people enter into once they’re overcome by affectionate feelings, in which they remain as long as it’s agreed on by both parties. Quite naturally this has led the gay community to ask, “if this is marriage, then why can’t we be a part of it?”

But this isn’t marriage, and in this post I intend to show what marriage is. Bear with me as I work backwards to build my case, since my argument starts with a story.

I was completely unprepared for what would happen to me the day my daughter was born.
Sure I’d felt a general, low level of excitement at the thought of meeting her—it was neat to feel her kick in her mother’s womb, or see her profile on the ultrasound—but something happened to me when she came out, something like magic, or like the Mule adjusting my internal make-up, and I was overcome with emotion. (I’m not even sure emotion is the right word to describe it, but that one seems more nearly correct than any other word I can think of.)
 

It’s not an emotion like empathizing with something, not like watching a movie and having the performance leave an impression on you, but the kind of emotion that reaches into you, or through you, and changes you. It’s like a punch to the nose that makes you tear up, without pain. I felt my affections, my will, my dispositions being permanently altered. The rednecks call it, “being wrapped,” which isn’t a bad description, but I don’t think it conveys enough the almost physical force of being hit by a cold, heavy, 6 foot tall Pacific Ocean sleeper wave. It’s like being stuffed with so many good and seemingly conflicting feelings that your ability to hold them all together is shattered and you have to have a new container. It’s difficult to describe, really, but the effect is that you’re about 1000% less selfish than you were one second earlier. Non-believers even describe it as magical, spiritual, religious, as feeling like they’d witnessed a miracle. They say they found new levels of love and respect for the mother of their children, and I think that empathy comes as a result of the change.

After it was over I realized I’d felt that same thing once before—at my wedding. The moment the doors opened and I saw my future wife standing down the hallway from me, about to come to me, it got me. (My mother-in-law very wisely taught me to watch the groom as it trounces him before turning to look at the bride.) The baby version was the mirror image of it, the echo of it. My heart was telling me this baby was the physical manifestation of my union with her mother. Our act of love had overflowed to produce a whole new person who was hopelessly dependent on us to teach her about life. And as a product of half of both of us she was entitled to both of us. It’s was not only her right, but her deepest need to have her parents teach her absolutely everything, and I’d just gotten a big shot of everything it takes to make that happen right there.

Kids are a marriage come to life, or you could say marriage is the bond between a man and a woman that overflows into children and lasts the rest of your lives. Does marriage always manifest itself as children? Well no, sometimes the bodies of one or more person is damaged by something in this ruined world and it’s not possible. But that doesn’t lessen the fact that children are the walking, talking, physical representation of a marriage. Or that marriage that brings children to life, being the living expression of your one flesh union, and showing through their helpless dependency the proof that marriage is more than a biological reproductive act.

Now this is the part where I answer the objections. What about adoption? What about single parent families? What about a 14 year old girl who has a kid with a traveling Islamic fishmonger whom she never sees again? What about two 40 year olds who marry and can’t have a baby? They all boil down to one argument:  what about sin?
And to that I say, so what? So what if physical decay has rendered that union incapable of producing children? So what if a loser desires to steal the fruits from a tree he isn’t tending? Sin doesn’t change what a thing is it just sabotages it, or undercuts it, but the thing still remains itself. Does a man missing his legs prove humans normally don’t have two legs? Does the existence of the homeless man prove there are no such things as homes? An orphan doesn’t prove that there’s no such thing as marriage, it only proves that it’s devastatingly possible for someone to lose the two people who loves them most and produced them.

“Wait a minute” you say, “that’s a cheap shot! How can you assert a marriage is seen in kids? How can you blithely spout of the stupid notion that marriage just is? You’re only able to route any opposition to your view because you’ve defined it as the way things are, like a physical law!” Yes, exactly. It’s right up there with the law of identity. Marriage is a fundamental principle to the universe. Earth’s gravity pulls things downward. There is in each of us a conscience. Marriage is the covenant union between a man and woman which leads to kids. If you swear sexual fidelity to a brick that’s not marriage. If you to make vows to another man, that’s not marriage. In these cases the two things are inherently, naturally, biologically incapable of procreation, and with that off the table, so goes marriage. Marriage just is. No amount of pretending or good feelings can change that. And for that reason it’s not only a wonderful gift, but a completely invulnerable one. Glory be to God, marriage is.
If you have trouble understanding or accepting this then let me urge you to stop over complicating it. Marriage is a thing like an addition problem in math, or a soundwave, it has components to it, but ultimately it must be grasped as a whole, as something that is a part of reality and just is.

Knowing the Times

"Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command." 

-1 Chronicles 12:32 

In these post I demonstrate that the foundational problem of modern secular progressive humanism is reality itself. 

Boundaries--the series in which I explain absolutely everything about everything.  

The fight over the future of cultural humanism

What marriage really is


On "Gay Christians" (inspired by C.S. Lewis)