Shepherding Language Against Nostalgia's Draw
A sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds
Point Reyes (CA) Community Presbyterian Church
September 8, 2024
Audio Sermon linked here
Bulletin Quote "Night almost always falls first in the churches." -Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
SCRIPTURE READINGS
Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship the LORD. 3 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.”
5 For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, 7 then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.
8 Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the LORD.
Matt 7: 12-28
“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will know them by their fruits.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ 23 Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”
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I. Introduction: The Story of Odysseus Overview of Odysseus' journey: violent travel and eventual
homecoming as a metaphor for human excellence of purpose that reclaims a
homeland. Is the merit of Odysseus' tactics
what defines his success, or does the story mislead? Polytropos: complex, "multifarious," tactic-driven survival often admired
in modern society. Contrast with Christ’s critique of
merit and peace as the authentic virtue, challenging Roman ideals of virile
success.
II. Defining Realism and Arete The valorization of complexity in modern society and
how strategic thinking has evolved into careerism of mammon. Realism becomes about survival
tactics rather than moral virtue. Realism and nuance framed as choosing the lesser evil. Picking
battles. Being a survivor. Being a professional. Now, winning is the only thing.
(Lombardi). In that we seek our place on a frozen mountain top, basking
like a statue in the acclaim of glory in which we can sleep blessed.
Contrast the modern ideal with peacemaking as the true
arete. Peacemaking is prophetic and defined by grace, not by
ego-driven strategies. Peacemaking requires soul training,
empathy, and a kinesthetic connection to others. DANCE Odysseus and Heroism: The modern society’s
valorization of tactical survival and strategic thinking—symbolized by
Odysseus—can be misleading in terms of what true virtue is. This argument is
valid in that it critiques how modern definitions of "heroism" can
be narrow, focusing on violent survival tactics rather than moral virtue
which keeps us in our roles in the Kingdom of God.
III. The Trinity and Logic The Trinity as an embodiment of
perichoretic grace challenges rationalist logic. Trinitarian oneness is about shared
purpose, not static forms. Grace transcends materialism and
identity politics, calling for the elevation of creation and the Greatest
Commandment (GR) as the foundation for moral action.
Trinitarian Theology and Logic: the Trinity undermines binary logic by the dance of perichoresis (mutual indwelling) and Trinitarian oneness. grace and shared purpose come down from the rigid structures of rationality and materialist configurations of christian doctrine to take an active role on the ground.
IV. Critique of Modern Political
Discourse
Modern political discourse has
devolved into "us vs. them" rhetoric driven by identity politics. Media and elites stoke anger and
resentment, commodifying identity and weaponizing language to create
division. Politics focuses on stereotypes,
undermining compromise and deliberation.
V. Impact of Neoliberalism Neoliberalism has privatized all
human activities, commodifying them and alienating individuals.
Public policy is shaped by
corporate interests, leaving society fractured.
Neoliberal language creates a stultifying monoculture of
anomie and nihilism
where wealth is the only source of meaning.
·
Language is mistrusted. ·
Art creates nausea at its supposed privilege seeking
biases. ·
Tech and crypto industries fuel this monoculture, ·
fostering identity politics as existential battles.
VI. Theological and Moral Failings
in Political Rhetoric Both left- and right-wing identity
politics focus on victimhood and power rather than moral deliberation. Language manipulation by political
figures creates enemies and dehumanizes opponents.
Fascism arises from the
manipulation of struggle and identity politics to mobilize hatred and
violence.
Christians are drawn into
"lesser evil" justifications, which distort the Logos (divine
reason) and create moral confusion. Fascism and Language Manipulation and the agonistic framing of
identity politics. This draws parallels
between modern authoritarian trends and earlier fascist regimes, which used
language and identity to create an existential enemy. The use of Jules Barbey
d'Aurevilly's quote to argue spiritual
corruption in religious institutions aligns with political agendas of mammon seeking.
VII. Spiritual Corruption Mammon manipulates language and
creates a world of materialism and power-seeking. Neoliberal financialization
furthers the privatization of all human activity, leading to a disconnected
society. The degradation of language mirrors
the rise of fascism, turning political and religious discourse into tools for
division.
VIII. Solutions: Grace, Legacy, and
Recollection Grace is the ultimate solution. It
creates a legacy of virtue and peace, countering the divisiveness of identity
politics. The sermon calls for the rejection
of neoliberalism and materialism. Recollection of the past, not
nostalgia, is necessary to meet current challenges. IX. Attendance to Grace and
Peacemaking Trinitarian ousia (essence) is
about shared purpose and accompaniment. The sermon emphasizes the need for
a reflective approach to the past, grounded in grace and the Greatest
Commandment. Modern political language,
distorted by mammon, leads to moral confusion. The solution lies in peacebuilding,
reconciliation, and the restoration of narratives of meaning. It’s not nostalgia. These are ghosts--shades that try to live again by inhibiting
the future’s energies of betterment from arriving: the kingdom of God. |
We call these travels through
the gods’ anger “odysseys.”
The Characterization asserted at
the outset that Odyesseus was a much-turned, much-armed, much-tacticed man
the basis of his merit? Or is this epic a cartoon that misleads?
“Complicated:”one who chooses his battles.
That’s the professional’s arete, the one who survives in the market
of human price assigning judgements.
“Nuanced” we may call him, who always chooses the lesser evil. "Realism:" that lesser evils frame and occasion the good.
The experience of odysseys sets a
culture to framing and shaping the terms of its excellence, how through
battle and struggle has ensured our hero’s survival and thus his virile
virtu-s are timeless and unchangeable.
Contrast polytropos in
Hebrews. Many tactic-ed virtue and peace.
As ever, Christ is the paradigm
critique of any notion of merit. I am here this morning not to pick
a new battle with ancient Athens but to deny the resurgence of Roman Imperial
notions of success and victory through virile beastliness. The virtu-s of Wolfs and dogs. Vs.
the authentic virtues of sheep
II. Defining Realism and Arete
Modern Romans (I’m not address RCC)
valorize virile complexity and strategic thinking (as arete) are true sources
of virtue. Strategic thinking warring on the fields of finance make every one
into careerists of mammon ready to step over others—to win a limited share of
honor manifest in wealth alone. In this context, “Realism” becomes
defined as choosing the lesser evil to always survive. This is the weed of
existentialism framed by philosophy.
To endure by individual wit and
tactic alone and isolated into what ever chaos one finds oneself thrown.
Polytropos is the existentially
“complicated” one, so late-modern. The kind of person we admire as a
“survivor” without asking how or why. The kind of professional we admire
who has learned to “pick his battles” as he climbs mountains and
hierarchies. Who shoots first and asks questions later.
By contrast Peacemaking is the real excellence
of polytropos. It
is ousia (essence) the human essence of which shares with the divine
accompaniment and shared action, guided by grace, not by ego. Peacemaking is prophetic, shaped
by virtue and wisdom, and not by strategic power. It is kinesthetic as it
learns the soul’s full range of empathy in order to begin to comply with the
GR duty.
·
Peacemaking reads the full context of conflict and
through experience and wisdom, ·
anticipates how to keep the peace through virtue and
·
bides and observes to offer positive solutions. ·
These require travels and experiences at
least as varied and ranging as Odysseus’, with a far broader range of soul
training through the arts and kinesthetic processing of beauty, ·
poignancy, awe, and the sublime ·
that has gentled our inner boxer, ·
our inner pugilist, ·
where we have learned to take off our inner boxing
gloves a ·
and have learned to tap our hearts to connect our
heels with a partner, ·
not an identity.
So Not only prophetic is the
many-tacticed peacemaker, but dances---
perichoretic grace (mutual
indwelling), challenges rationalist paradigms of fixed "systems." Nimbleness for the overarching end of peacemaking, not self-aggrandizing
Trinitarian oneness is not bound
by mathematical logic, but by shared purpose and flourishing,
undermining materialistic and
static formalism. Ousia is dynamic and ever-present
accompanying energy of care that contradicts simplistic, binary thinking of
opposing forces, . the energetic accord and alignment
and active attendance to grace spreading is what makes Jesus God: his
elevation of the GR is a full commitment to the creation. The creation as
god intends every eternal thing. So that every deprivation and oppression in
extremis transcends materialism as usual and the divisive politics of
identity winning,
of partisans who are frozen into a
type that wins. Freezing oneself off from growth,
from becoming actually is a loss, a loser
Through which political language
has devolved into “us versus them” rhetoric. Modern media, elites, and identity
politics manipulate language, creating divisions that are empty of purposive
meaning but only to stoke anger and resentment.
Unfortunately finance with
crypto-concerns have learned techniques to commodifiy identity, where
language is weaponized to create false categories and tensions instead of
traditional focuses on deliberated compromise over issues on how best to
share and unify.
V. Impact of Neoliberalism The move to financialize every and
all human activities to the breakdown of meaningful discourse and community,
subject them to prices rather than peacemaking dialogue has brought forth a ·
ghostly language of ·
Austerity for all but financiers, ·
privatization of public assets, ·
and endowing corporate power with rights of
political standing to shape social ties in its interests, ·
leaving individuals alienated and divided.
Its language of “branding” promotes
an aggressively stupifying monoculture where only wealth brings social
meaning. overpromised and underdelivered:
Technotainments, machine
intelligence, crypto, politics, education, and materialism Oozing like
flowing sewage, such tongues from social mediated networks and the anonymity
of AI manipulated chatbot guided “human agents” entering digitizable
responses into profit- and power-seeking systems.
Winning at all costs has delegitimated compromise, with identity politics now
framed as existential battles of life and death between partisan
factions.
Every scholar and religious leader
who fails to pass a growing array of political and tribal loyalty tests and
partisan shibboleths of code words are immediately attacked with the
projections of the partisan’s inner, power-seeking, logos-perverting demons.
VI. Theological and Moral Failings
in Political Rhetoric The sermon critiques both left- and
right-wing identity politics for focusing on victimhood and identity-based
power rather than moral deliberation. political figures backed by shadowy
funny money manipulate language to create enemies and dehumanize opponents.
From this degradation of political
language spreads the idea of fascism to link to the supposed realism of
struggle (agon) and identity politics of the use of “lesser evils” to
mobilize hatred and violence.
What shocks me is the readiness of
Christians to involve themselves in not only participating but lending
their authority to “lesser evil” justifications: What drives this
victory-at-all-costs mentality is the formation of power blocs through identity politics,
fractioning identities along ethnic, anatomical, and ideological lines. crypto-finance manages these
proliferating identities and sorting and merging them for partisan and
manipulable energies—
to identify and align with the
victory program and invite their neighbors to their organizations— their “true churches.”
Identity partisan politics starts
from two foundations: ·
indigeneity: supposed blood ties to native soil
(or the founding father’s soil of a particular way of reading the
Constitution), ·
and from those who claim to be most victimized
by these founding groups and lineages: who are the most victimized—not in
terms of individual experience, by a claimed tie to others in that group
(“left handers”): The most extreme partisans are
those who can be manipulated into joining the most angering complex of identities simultaneously both entitled and victimized:
their own identity as the true American one,
with some projecting murderous intent onto their opponents: “They kill
babies! They want to kill us!”
So we become 2nd Amendment people
in existentially framing of good versus evil, those under the Jezebel spirit
versus those in Christ,
Some Christians now lead the charge
in shape shifting religion from peacemaking ethics into identity politics
shaped by language claims of “persecution”
and increasingly feel called to
lead partisan coalitions united by collective grievance turning violent, knowing they are bankrolled by
interests who recognize the symbolic usefulness of idiots who claim the
powerful name of Jesus now redirected by collective grievance This astonishes me. Lilliana Mason in her 2018 book
Uncivil Agreement explains: "The conservative... Christian
Coalition grew steadily in support and influence in the...years [accompanying
neoliberal ascendancy]. By 1995 they had publicly paired with prominent
Republican senators and congressmen, including the Republican Speaker of the
House, Newt Gingrich, to announce the Contract with the American Family,
which sought the legislation of Christian morality." -- Mason, Lilliana. Uncivil
Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago, Illinois ; London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2018, 33. "In 1994, Newt Gingrich sent members
of the Republican Party a memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”
This memo came to be known as the GOPAC memo, and was meant to
instruct Republicans on what types of words to use when describing their
political opposition. As he wrote in the memo, 'This list is prepared so that
you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail,
in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and
phrases are powerful' (Gingrich 1994). Gingrich’s list of recommended
words to describe Democrats included betray, bizarre, decay, destroy,
devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors, among many others. To this day, this is the type of language used by party leaders to demonize opponents." --Ibid., 132, emph. added.
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VII. Spiritual Corruption The Bible helps us frame the
destruction of political concord. Jeremiah wrote Here you are, trusting in deceptive words
to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make
offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known. And Jesus condemns going after the
false god mammon who promises wealth in exchange for service. Jesus in
Matthew 15:24-26 contrasted the sheep of Israel with those metaphorically
referred to as 'dogs'--spirits of fearfulness that lash out with disordering
expressions when cornered. Such spirits can be influenced--(un)leashed by a
certain kind of mammon's (Matthew 6:24) hand and finance-distorted
language--leading to agonistic (attack-posture) subservience as a means of
achieving self-respect through ecstatic --"standing outside of"
--imaging in anonymity and recurrence, the aesthetization of violence, and a
collective regimentation of bared teeth. THIS is what our political culture
is teaching children: that winning is everything, accomplished by any means
necessary because we’ve convinced ourselves that our holiness is our ends
that justifies any means: A fascist barks under the hand of
mammon, projecting biological agon as ontological and historically necessary:
machismo, alpha dog dominance, and contempt for other human expressions of
craft entice each generation, especially if they feel unsafe, disrespected,
or superannuated. Alain de Benoist, a political right thinker aware of
fascism’s allure, described reactionaries as clothed in atavisms of
"bitterness, sneering, derision, regret, nostalgia—showing the Right’s
ideal is always foregone, always spent."
Neoliberal financialization
privatizes and prices every dimension of human activity, shaping public
policy on private vice, austerities for all but financiers, and capital
unmoored from environmental and social origins. Now, capital is being
detached from any social purpose, creating radically decentering, private
cryptocurrency-mediated markets outside democratic assemblies, with private
vigilantes acting as sheriffs. As finance drifted from its roots,
anger grew among those seeing themselves as “losers.” Language was
reconditioned to redefine “winning” in terms of wealth achievement only,
while politics became consumed with framing stereotypes: southern,
“Christian,” exurban, male, and Republican versus Democrat, womanist, black,
and urban. Compromise gave way to “winning” at all costs—not just
economically but in terms of social respect and “right to life.” Fascism manipulates declining
societies by linking struggle (agon) to a specific place, giving it a
perceived genetic advantage. This struggle gains theological significance,
like the final rays of a setting sun over Pharaoh—a lost battle to be
reversed by resurrecting man through political identity that reconstructs
language to serve propaganda. Pastors are recruited to "win" the
nation and, by doing so, win the past and future.
Of the church’s complicity with the
manipulation of religious language and frameworks of meaning through partisan
demonization and degradation of the Logos of peacemaking, we may safely apply
the accountability implied through Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's quote,
"Night almost always falls first in the churches." A wolf is responsible who misleads the dogs, of
them: Isaiah 5:20:
Ah—“woe,” a lament for a death-- you who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter! Tragically, the church is allowing
its language and logic—its Logos—to be inverted to serve political ends of
violent wealth seekers, leading to spreading moral confusion and the
acceleration of metacrises.
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X. Solutions
This sermon sounds the alarm about how modern political language
has devolved to tempt Christians into a stark "us versus them"
rhetoric,
a division stoked by
media, social sorting into clusters, and manipulative elites, fostering deep-seated
resentment and anger grounded on the construction of false identities originating out of stone and soil and inevitably move to set stones against enemies,
their categories that foment energies that terrorize, and
their expansion into more angry and intersectional niches and electronic
corners that set neighborhoods ablaze.
Christ ever denounces
these devious deviances of mammon language: the commodification of identity
under late capitalism, where identity politics become a substitute for genuine
meaning-making.
Instead, a reflective approach to the past based on the virtue of recollection rather than a statics of nostalgia for forms and bygone orders brings a deeper, more inclusive understanding of personhood and community based on the flow of Trinitarian ousia that accompanies action. Not any action, but action that soothes, repairs, heals, and is committed to the ideals of language rather than its manipulation and machining—its commercial branding of personhood, its anonymity and cryptic financialization of social and community structures.
The institutionalization of elite partisanship and
propagandizing.
Late modernity is unlivable Frankenstein categories that rip
apart shalom in service of finance/mammon.
And they have, under the withering critique of deconstruction
of privilege, become “cryptic/crypto” so that now we see conspiracies
everywhere that lead us down rabbitholes where we get buried in the “ooze” of
diversion and degradation of language so we cannot discern meaning and only
look to what looks familiar to our sense of nostalgia.
We cannot discern the
big picture. Society is hungry for purpose and the restoration of narratives of
meaning, and it looks out and sees what the media portrays as the church is the
church.
There's rising anxiety, depression, loneliness, &
suicidal thoughts in the absence of meaning making outside of our nostalgia:
when we felt cared for and had a sense of enchantment not yet adulterated by
the concrete of adult-privileging cisterns of greedy and fearing slop.
What to do?
1)
Secularist philosophy tries to create new
Frankensteins of ratio applied to forms to replace language of smoothing kinesthetics and energies of care-- a machined discourse of efficiency,
The deeper struggle between the spirits of
mammon and the messiah is now operating by neoliberalism’s manipulation of
language that creates a language-debased culture of metaphorical dogs and
whistles that assault the sheep which are the children of eternity. So that AI
recombinant categorizations are revealed as dead ends.
The same distrust of old Frankensteins serves new
madnesses: the rejection not just of political science but all efforts
at collectives originating, esp. in the Golden Rule (GR), all efforts to build common cause; thus follows:
2) Get rid of the
state and allow individuals free rein: Murray Rothbard and libertarian anarchy presage "acceleration" [of chaos] and private cryptocurrencies backed by the trust of those who want to rid us of laws regulating against untrue or libelous speech, like Thiel and Musk, co-creators of PayPal.
But this nihilistic anarchy even withdraws from the arts: Karl
Ove Knausgaard:
“I increasingly lost ...faith in literature. I read and thought, this is something someone has made up…[by] made-up people in a made-up, though ...
realistic, world… It was a crisis… I couldn't write like
this, it wouldn't work, every sentence was met with the thought: but you're
just making this up. It has no value. Fictional writing has no value…
The only genres I saw value in, which still conferred
meaning, were diaries and essays, the types of literature that did not deal
with narrative, that were not about anything, but just consisted of a voice,
the voice of your own personality… Art cannot be experienced collectively.
Nothing can.”
--Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, book 2
Characterizing this as “nausea,” as a scientific reaction to
the bias inherent in narrative and thus to religion, like early Wittgenstein, then to remove every human feeling and aesthetic and natural dimension to language as biased because they are contextual and thus not universal, though the soul's appeal the
only way to unify, not some machined idea of biasing future social order.
Such solipsism of nausea and efficiency dresses up its flight from community as
objective, an ironical detachment.
Such privileging "Nature" folds us inward, into degenerating creases--nihilists.
Doesn’t this obsession with winning scientifically detached rather
than morally compelling,
abusing language thereby, make us nauseous in its own way?
And is that nausea shared?
[Someone like Sartre or Kolnai, so that appreciation is
foreclosed, but nausea not?]
One who ignores the test and call of art to build common
cause and process the kinesthetics of healing?
Where the flattening of expression to serve a scientific market state that rips from language its soul, its situatedness, its metaphysics?
Isn’t such a
scientific state as dangerous as theocrats who deny science?
So now to option 3: retrieve historical metaphysics of transcendence?
3) Ortland:
Protestantism as Retrieval of some text-led order and institutional
continuities applicable to all epochs:
Protestantism is a hermeneutic of historical
contextualization that retrieve , I, II, III intent of the shared and liberated
heart as foretold by Jeremiah. But that hermeneutic is loosed from the cage of
confessional determinism (the solae) to serve the mission and teleology of
repair. So that Protestantism may only move forth and forward from the
institutionalization of these doctrinal
retrievals of the solas. No longer is faith simply beliefing, but it is
alignment with the flow of grace and attendance thereto by the obligatory
ethics of the GR. Ethics guiding epistemology, not a retrieval of some ideology
of justification absent merit, some ideology of institutionalized scripture.
Where ethics deinstitutionalize (ever reformanda) confessionally hardened configurations and
formally static epistemologies
Since the church will not perish-not possible-though religio
that absents grace will--the church will become more immanent, & we must
attend to folk & high culture: the attested archives of the former in
conversation with the latter. In this Christ continues becoming all-in-all. SO:
4) Attendance to
Grace as the solution, whereby we recognize every moment is created by God
to allow us to create a legacy that endures—eternally endures—by virtues
flowing from the GR. Recollection, not nostalgia of retrieval, where
the past is contextualized and adopted to meet current challenges of
pacification, shalom-building, and repair of created unities of the loved
children of God.
Immanence as attendance to science, theology, and soul
development through kinesthetics as the gentling unifer.
Micah 6:8: "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
And so to experience and further the dance of creation, to dance with creation, and to lead others to discover the dance, the unboxing of form that unboxes the interior pugilistic muscular urge to frame the communication of bodies seeking wholeness. Virtues grounded in GR tame the inner agonist urges mirrored imagistically in body. Through kinesthetic training and pedagogy, we learn to serve Christ-consequentialism by these intellect-guiding, heart-intending energies.
That dance transforms and communicates virtues that build shalom: energies of gentleness and rapture, of collective celebration and attendance to others, of hospitality and accountability to the all the Creation in the Great Commandment
We dance to tame our inner boxer, our inner dog, our inner
calculations of
situational ethics of polytropos into the teleological
ethical structure of the sheepfold, speaking its language and commitment to
truth.
A shepherd cannot/may not betray language, the logos that calls the sheep.
III. The Trinity and Logic
But danced: perichoretic grace (mutual indwelling), challenges rationalist thought.
Trinitarian oneness is not bound by mathematical logic, but by shared purpose and flourishing, undermining materialistic and static formalism. Ousia is dynamic and ever-present accompanying energy of care that contradicts simplistic, binary thinking of opposing forces.
the energetic accord and alignment and active attendance to grace spreading is what makes Jesus God: his elevatiuon of the GR is a full commitment to the creation. The creation as god intends every eternal thing. So that every deprivation and oppression in extremis transcends materialism as usual and the divisive politics of identity winning, of partisans..
IV. Critique of Modern Political Discourse
Through which political language has devolved into “us versus them” rhetoric.
Modern media, elites, and identity politics manipulate language, creating divisions that are empty of purposive meaning but only to stoke anger and resentment.
Unfortunately finance with crypto-concerns have learned techniques to commodifiy identity, where language is weaponized to create false categories and tensions instead of traditional focuses on deliberated compromise over issues on how best to share and unify.
V. Impact of Neoliberalism
The move to financialize every and all human activities to the breakdown of meaningful discourse and community, subject them to prices rather than peacemaking dialogue has brought forth neoliberalism.
Austerity for all but financiers, privatization of public assets, and endowing corporate power with rights of political standing to shape social ties in its interests, leaving individuals alienated and divided.
Its language of “branding” promotes an aggressively stupifying monoculture where only wealth brings social meaning. The new monoculture of human meaning and purpose has overpromised and underdelivered:
Tech, crypto, politics, education, and materialism Oozing like flowing sewage, such tongues from social mediated networks and the anonymity of AI manipulated chatbot guided “human agents” entering digitizable responses into profit- and power-seeking systems.
Winning at all costs has delegitimated compromise, with identity politics now framed as existential battles between partisan factions.
Every scholar and religious leader who fails to pass a growing array of political and tribal loyalty tests and partisan shibboleths of code words are immediately attacked with the projections of the partisan’s inner, power-seeking, logos-perverting demons.
VIII. Solutions: Grace, Legacy, and Recollection
Grace is the ultimate solution outworking in the duty of the GR: The flow of Trinitarian ousia creates a legacy through virtue and peacebuilding, contrasting with the divisiveness of identity politics.
The sermon calls for the rejection neoliberalism as mammon’s values: “branding, marketplace of ideas, professionalism, pricing of every activity, underpaying every job with an empathetic or moral healing purpose, instead to language degradation and cultural alienation.
IX. Attendance to Grace and Peacemaking
The sermon emphasizes recollection, not nostalgia, where the past is contextualized to meet current challenges.
ousia: *accompaniment, shared conation, where the flow is actualized by the energies and processing of perichoretic grace, not by some consequentialist seeking of an ego’s formal preference for an order or institutioned *station.
The Trinity thus belies the mathematic foundations of “ratio-nality” because 1+1+1 seems illogical to it when submitted to it. However, break free from thinking of material forms and units. Try thinking of shared activities of oneness that build shared purpose in terms of flourishing and GR, a single intention to sustain&flow and attends to and with creation’s intent and repair.The Trinity is NOT irrational or illogical unless you are stuck in static formalism. Greek "ousia" is better than its Latin tr. "substantia"
My sermon has addressed my alarm about how modern political language has devolved into stark "us versus them" rhetoric, a division stoked by media, social sorting, and manipulative elites, fostering deep-seated resentment and anger grounded on the construction of false identities of stone that stone, their categories that foment energies that terrorize, and their expansion into more angry and intersectional niches and electronic corners that set neighborhoods ablaze. Christ ever denounces these devious deviances of mammon language: the commodification of identity under late capitalism, where identity politics become a substitute for genuine meaning-making.
Instead, a reflective approach to the past based on the virtue of recollection rather a statics of nostalgia for forms and bygone orders brings a deeper, more inclusive understanding of personhood and community based on the flow of Trinitarian ousia that accompanies action. Not any action, but action that soothes, repairs, heals, and is committed to the ideals of language rather than its manipulation and machining—its commercial branding of personhood, its anonymity and cryptic financialization of social and community structures. The institutionalization of elite partisanship and propagandizing.
Late modernity is unlivable Frankenstein categories that rip apart shalom in service of finance/mammon. And they have, under the withering critique of deconstruction of privilege, become “cryptic/crypto” so that now we see conspiracies everywhere that lead us down rabbitholes where we get buried in the “ooze” of diversion and degradation of language so we cannot discern meaning. We cannot discern the big picture. Society is hungry for purpose and the restoration of narratives of meaning, and it looks out and sees what the media portrays as the church is the church.
There's rising anxiety, depression, loneliness, & suicidal thoughts in the absence of meaning making outside of our nostalgia: when we felt cared for and had a sense of enchantment not yet adulterated by the concrete of adult-privileging cisterns of slop.
So what is the solution? What can the church offer this win-at-all cost age exhausted and demoralized by mammon-led civilization’s corruption of language that make all virtues realist, meaning “for sale,” all virtues “professional,” esp. those promoting deliberation and peacemaking and finding common ground?
X. Solutions
This sermon is a call to alarm about how modern political language
has devolved to tempt Christians into a stark "us versus them"
rhetoric,
a division stoked by
media, social sorting, and manipulative elites, fostering deep-seated
resentment and anger grounded on the construction of false identities of stone
that stone,
their categories that foment energies that terrorize, and
their expansion into more angry and intersectional niches and electronic
corners that set neighborhoods ablaze.
Christ ever denounces
these devious deviances of mammon language: the commodification of identity
under late capitalism, where identity politics become a substitute for genuine
meaning-making.
Instead, a reflective
approach to the past based on the virtue of recollection
rather a statics of nostalgia for comforting
forms and bygone, static orders brings a deeper, more inclusive understanding
of personhood and community based on the flow of Trinitarian ousia that
accompanies action.
Not any action, but action that soothes, repairs, heals, and
is committed to the ideals of language rather than its manipulation and
machining—
its commercial branding of personhood,
its anonymity and cryptic financialization of social and
community ties and duties.
The institutionalization of elite partisanship and
propagandizing.
Late modernity is unlivable Frankenstein categories that
rip apart shalom in service of finance/mammon.
And they have, under the withering critique of
deconstruction of privilege, become “cryptic/crypto” so that now we see
conspiracies everywhere that lead us down rabbitholes where we get
buried in the “ooze” of diversion and degradation of language so we
cannot discern meaning and only look to what looks familiar to our sense of
nostalgia.
We cannot discern the big picture.
Society is hungry for purpose and the restoration of narratives of meaning, and it
looks out and sees what the media portrays as the church is the church.
There's rising anxiety, depression, loneliness, &
suicidal thoughts in the absence of meaning making outside of our
nostalgia: when we felt cared for and had a sense of enchantment not yet
adulterated by the concrete of adult-privileging cisterns of greedy and fearing
slop that troubles conscience.
A shepherd cannot/may not betray language, the logos that
calls the sheep. Address always the sheep: they can hear you. They will hear
you.
Never address the dogs. They can only hear their whistles.
In Jesus Christ is our identity which is not in a material
form or matter but in our energies of ethical excellence and commitment to what
God continues bringing.
May it be so for you and me, AMEN.
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