New here but really appreciating what you have shared here. I wish you a delightful summer holiday and look forward to whatever new ideas you will unfold further along.
Did anyone else find that this week was a great opportunity to internally say, "absolutely no, Satan?" I've seen things coming out from Apple and their new blinding pro...whoops.. I mean.... "Vision" Pro device. It feels as if the moment was given to us as an opportunity to practically opt-out. Is this where we begin to say no more?
For those of you without a phone, you've already done this bit. But for some of us new luddite-ish folks, this feels like a great moment to stand firm and just say... "I'm out." Or am I making too much of this?
Yes, I have seen lots of reactions along these lines. And their promotional video was very sad. The father didn't bother taking the goggles off to interact with his child.
From a physiological perspective, it seems like we have not learnt our lesson from the pandemic about the importance of faces and visible emotions. Masks covered the mouth hiding the smile for a time (justifiably or not depending on one's views). Now Apple is releasing this which covers the eyes - obscuring a feature which gives us some of our most intimate encounters and a rich display of emotions. You become more like a machine whilst giving up one of your most precious human features. It is a dehumanising technology - not as Apple would like you to believe a life - enhancing one.
The father not attending to his family stuck out to me too. I felt it was surreal. It's as if Apple was whispering its intentions to us during the whole ad. Subtle messages like "your kids are fine without you," or "who needs to play when you can be productive." Along the lines of your notion of the false virtues of speed and efficiency. "Look how much you can get done. Take the time you spend with your children and do something valuable."
Dehumanizing is a great way to think of it for sure. This is certainly just another step for "them" to fully integrate the participants into The Machine. But most will simply go along. It's become so rare now to have another human look you in the eye during a social encounter... Why not go ahead and cover your eyes entirely?
I have recently discovered your work and am interested in reading the series in order. Is there a list of titles and publication dates I may reference to plan my reading?
It has been warm and sunny for days here too - in Essex, UK - "the land of eternal sunshine" (or at least that's how I jokingly refer to my home county).
Recently in preparation for a reading group I host on my substack, I read Wendell Berry's essay, The Making of a Marginal Farm. What struck me was his observation that hillsides were inhospitable (unsuitable) places for tractors and thus horse-drawn tools had to be used. Thus in marginal areas, old traditional ways prosper and modern machines often struggle to get a foothold. In lowlands/more productive areas, these traditional practices have to fight against modern tech and machines' efficiencies and competitive advantage (and corporate advertising) - and by and large, lose the battle and become relics.
So my working theory is that marginal lands and places can become "refuges from the machine" and I am currently working this into an essay. I am interested to hear others' thoughts on this. And if one has the time, I thoroughly recommend Berry's essay - it will pay dividends to read it.
Not sure if it’s online anywhere but it is in the collection ‘A World Ending Fire’. I’m not sure what collection it was originally published in. Anybody know?
Had to do some digging, but it's from a 1981 collection called 'Recollected Essays,' which was reprinted in 1998. Don't know if it appeared in any other collections.
The “link” is your hands which hold the book for your eyes to enjoy. (Meant to be a playful comment, no disrespect intended). This seems particularly appropriate for Berry who did/does not use a computer to write. He uses a pencil. His wife types out the manuscript on a manual typewriter. Convivial tools, just like those described in the essay!
I would agree with you theory about marginal lands, (which is about limitations in general). The beauty of having land unsuitable for tractor use is that the possibility of using one is eliminated for you. You are thus sheltered from the machine by a sort of natural grace. Thus submitted you must seek another way. The world is actually overflowing with such Grace. It is the machine, and all that drives it, which seeks to replace Grace with limitlessness. If one cannot relocate to marginal lands, one could find other ways to make themselves marginal.
Thank you for the reference. I can't remember if I have read that one, but am going to revisit it. I have used both tractors, horses (and oxen) on hillsides and it is just unsettling to be on a tractor. There are places a tractor will just flip or roll, but an animal, like a person can adjust its stance to the ground. (Maybe there is a metaphor there somewhere?) Your idea of "refuges from the machine" is a good one.
I suggest that - just as agribusiness is part of the Machine - there are "marginal lands" as you describe them in the edges and abandoned spaces of the industrial world. This is territory that is only suitable for the "cooked" barbarians to inhabit, but the combination of derelict physical spaces with the knowledge of having been abandoned by "the prosperous world" even in sight of its gleaming towers engenders a readiness to think of alternatives.
This week marks the sixth anniversary of the burning of Grenfell Tower in London. A friend was working with the survivors for a time. She lived in a grotty single-room flat five minutes walk from the tower, and right on the border with Rich London: across the road from her were boutiques selling blouses at £1000 a pop.
This discussion is important because it opens up answers to the big question of every age: How can I resist evil?
For some reason the accompanying photo and your statement, “Here is a cow in the Burren enjoying the impacts of man-made climate change,” brought tears… we human beings are so short sighted. Thank you for your writings on the Machine and inspiring so many to change tact. Blessings to you and all your readers.
Well we are all very much looking forward to the next essay. Now I have one question that is pretty frivolous but here it goes. Have you (or any other readers here) seen the movie "Wild Mountain Thyme" ? It is set in Ireland, with apparently terrible accents, but they sound passable to my Canadian ear. I found it charming, and upon repeated viewing, rather moving. Here is one of my favorite lines:
“There’s these green fields… and the animals living off them. And over that there’s us… living off the animals. And over that there’s that which tends to us… and lives off us maybe. Whatever that is… it holds me here.“
And another exchange:
“Do you still hear the voice in the fields?” she asks.
“I don’t know," he replies.
“It’s not a modern idea,” she says.
“I’m not a modern man.”
Whatever this movie is, and I'm no movie critic, it feels refreshingly out of step with everything else Hollywood produces, and full of the truly human stuff.
I watched it a few months ago and loved the simplicity of it. Bit weird what goes on in his head (I won't spoil it), but lovely film. One of those that makes you remember the important stuff in life.
Was fortunate enough to attend the June 3, Dublin 'Christ, Creation, and the Cave: Seeking the Bush Soul of Christianity' event featuring Paul, Martin Shaw and Jonathan Pageau. I've yet to sort through the handful of photos I took, but you can at least see one, of the three speakers together, in my latest essay:
Quick impressions from a non-Christian: three guys who've seen *something*, had a brush with the divine, and are trying to carry word of the spirit of that experience back to a prosaic and increasingly indifferent (when not openly hostile) culture. Unsurprisingly, all appear in the flesh just as they do in many a video or photo, though Paul is this lanky beanpole of a guy, taller than one expects, and looks like nothing so much as a farmer from a Norman Rockwell painting, though I am not sure Rockwell ever painted any English guys.
There was a really nice spirit to the gathering, on a stunningly beautiful day in Dublin, and a sense that this little space was for the moment the centre of the turning world; that you wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Pageau was often deferred to as resident expert on the scripture by Christian rookies Kingsnorth and Shaw. Martin Shaw has a way of captivating a room that's hard to describe. It was like being in the presence of Whitman or something. You just want to listen to him riff all day. There was also a strange sadness or weariness to him, or at least that's how it struck me.
Paul's turn at the mic saw him get right down to business, complete with set of slides. My impression is he's basically a guy operating at a rarefied level on both hemispheres of the right/left brain split. In a debate on any subject he's considered most would be hard-pressed to counter him. Unless you're operating somewhere near peak Hitchens-level I wouldn't advise trying it.
I haven't seen anyone post video or audio anywhere, but that doesn't mean it isn't out there somewhere. You can hear a bit about it here from an actual Christian:
As many of us strive to live more of our lives offline, I'm curious: do readers here have suggestions for print publications that speak to the topics we are used to reading here at the Abbey? I know many of us would be delighted to find Paul's newsletter in our mailboxes instead of our inboxes, but until that day...what periodicals or newsletters would you recommend? (I'll keep reading here too, of course!)
I suggest with hesitation the monthly magazine, Chronicles, published by The Rockford Institute, in Rockford, Illinois. My hesitation is caused by my own failure to keep up with the magazine in the last few years.
I was never disappointed and rarely offended by it. I don't know where in the world you are, so I'll tell you that in American political science terms of twenty years ago, it would have been classed as a paleoconservative venture, by far the most interesting thing of its type I've ever read. Now, of course, we're enlightened by the knowledge that what these monsters are really up to is the promotion of heteronormativity, white supremacy, patriarchy, and of course, hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.
They were writing in different terms about the sorts of things Paul writes about long ago. I would define them as implicitly Catholic but congenial to all Christians, lovers of the local as opposed to the more distant, despisers of contemporary popular culture and Leviathan. They love the things Paul and most of his readers love and loathe what we loathe.
Front Porch Republic's editor Jeff Bilbro does a clearinghouse every Saturday where he lists, summarizes, and provides links to articles and essays from other sources that are related to these things. Here's the link to this past Saturday's list as an example:
I've had these books on my list for a while, but am concerned that they'll be over my head (like much of what I read here, honestly!)-- but we never grow without stretching ourselves. Thanks for the nudge.
"Deschooling Society" is one of the most important books I've read in a very long time, and I read it recently. The other book about medicine I know as "Medical Nemesis", but maybe they're not the same. David Cayley has devoted his life ? to bringing Ivan Illich's books to a wider audience, and he has a book of conversations that is a good place to start with Illich, and very readable ; somebody interviewing him, and asking questions about Illich.
I recently re-read Solzhenitsyn's famous commencement address, and it made me think instantly of your fantastic recent essay. Here, with apologies for the length, is Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978:
"How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.
The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man’s physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.
And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century."
Is that not perfect? If only Harvard had listened...
I think that strange things happen when we imagine that from ONE vantage point in the world, and in our experience, we can see everything that is going on in society ; when we erase the different planes in society : private, intimate, public, and the differences they make in who we are and how we think and act. Ironically enough, this position can be resumed by the word, "absolute", which comes to us from the Latin "ab-solus", a particular perspective in Latin grammar (I think, but am not sure).
There is a phrase that goes : "Man cannot live by bread alone".
There are different ways of looking at that phrase, but it summarizes the tension of the human condition. "Man can not live by bread... alone." That does not mean that bread doens't enter into the picture somewhere. Nor does it mean that bread SHOULDN'T enter into the picture... somewhere.
But how to put together spiritual, material (as in corporal...), emotional, in Man ? How to put Man together ?
A tall order.
Strangely enough, in recent times I have found myself in a somewhat... missionary position in public space, with people around me in personal encounters, often just one or two people, and never a crowd or a big group. I have seen how much people are starving for personal contact, and to hear that they are NOT terrible sinners according to a current ecological religion that promotes the idea that WE have sinned, and our sins/overpopulation are taking the world down. Ecological hellfire and brimstone. I am not sure it is very... productive, shall we say. It does not encourage personal responsibility but hopelessness in many people at least.
Maybe it would be correct to say that there is no way to look somebody in the eye, and speak to them with frankness when you are broad-casting, even over a video ? (two years of silence for that phrase in the Gospels when Jesus says "Come with me and I shall make you fishers of.. men." So... what was wrong with being fishers of fish ? And what was wrong with being a self employed middle class carpenter, while we're at it ?...) What are the limits of broadcasting ? What suffers when you start adressing large numbers of people ? Are there ways of doing it that are more acceptable, that don't become imPERSONAL ? I personally believe that Jesus himself was deeply divided on the problem of addressing people, or talking about them as categories (the poor), and the problem of addressing them as unique, and singular in space and time, and I can see evidence of this in the Gospels.
What happens to us as physical bodies, assigned to a PLACE and a time, which makes us singular and unique, when we are broadcasted to, or broadcasting ?
As for mercy and sacrifice (and forgiveness, let's not forget that one), for sure we talked more about them in the past, but there can be miles between talking about them, and practicing them.
Maybe we have become the sacrificial victims of our own success ? We have carried the evangelical message first, of... love and charity, then of the "rights" of Man to the whole world, and we are suffering from having nowhere else to... broadcast to ?
For the "moral poverty" at the end of this quotation, does this mean our tendancy to ask "what is it GOOD FOR ?" when assessing an object, or... a person ? in our world/experience ? I don't know.
Enjoy the weather Paul. Here in New Jersey, we are in drought (never saw this in May) and under a thick haze of smoke from fires in Nova Scotia. Normally, temps are around 80 degrees F this time of year, but the smoke cover (non nuclear winter) has the midday temps below 60 F. Smoke smelled so bad I thought the house was on fire. Pray. we get rain, soon.
I have had the fortune to find a healthy, thriving church community in Portland Oregon, and through the work of the Holy Spirit I have been persuaded to join Christ and his church body through baptism. My baptism is scheduled to occur in the coming weeks.
However, my church follows the Reformed Baptist tradition, and its elders have expressed concern to me that Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have traditions that appear to be in conflict with the Holy Word or don't have a basis in the Word ("extra-biblical"). A common theme is a concern about holding too closely to particular practices, and believing that it's having one's heart turned toward Jesus that is most important. I'm a baby Christian in terms of theology, but my church elders appear to be well educated in church history and theology themselves.
While I currently feel comfortable with my church, I do feel tension in that Eastern Orthodoxy does appear to be a more holistic faith with its ancient traditions, the reverence of the Virgin Mary, the saints, and perhaps a greater openness to respecting and paying attention to the relationships of God's Creation. Solely relying on the Bible for spiritual truth has left me feeling conflicted in my animist beliefs.
I would be very interested in comparisons of Protestantism vs. Eastern Orthodoxy and why either one feels more persuasive as more faithfully following Jesus.
You may enjoy the book Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, by Andrew Stephen Damick. It compares Orthodoxy to several different religions and other Christian denominations, and lays out the differences.
I can give you my perspective--though I'm not EO, currently Roman-rite Catholic, but most likely becoming Eastern Catholic before too long. I met Jesus at age 13 in a Pentecostal church. I even attended one of my denomination's Bible colleges in hopes to become a youth pastor. I soured on all of that for various reasons and became more Evangelical. Anyway, I jumped ship eleven years ago for Rome because my wife did not like Constantinople.
A general contrast between Protestantism and RC and EO is that Protestants tend to worship in their heads. The body plays a small role, emotions slightly larger, but it's truly about what you think, "believing" the right things. That's a bit of a simplification, but it's not a distortion, either. I have found in Catholicism, and adjacently, in Orthodoxy, treasures that the Reformation tried to bury. Tools to train the heart to fight against sin and fall more deeply in love with Jesus are what these two strains offer. History, sacraments, Tradition are what you will find in both branches. For me, the pull to the East comes from a much more connected view to the natural world than what I find in the Roman rite. Here's something I recently had published that speaks more to what you'd find in the older traditions than in any Protestant church: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/05/blessings-to-impart/
I should add I am immensely grateful for my Pentecostal upbringing in introducing me to Jesus and encouraging Bible reading and memorization.
Have you visited an Orthodox parish. I hope you will research in person what already appears to you more holistic, before committing to baptism. You want to be in “the church which is his body, the fullness of Him who filleth all in all.” Eph 1:23
For me, it became clear after decades elsewhere, that the Orthodox Christian life is that fullness.
Interesting question. I'll offer my small perspective too, but second what Gretchen says below: visting a church, experiencing liturgy and speaking to others, and to priests, is the best way to understand. Orthodoxy is deeply experiential.
To me, and to Orthodox people (and Catholics) the protestant notion that something called 'scripture' can be separated from something called 'tradition' is the heart of the protestant error. What is 'scripture', after all? It's a series of books pulled together in the fourth century that tell the life of Jesus, and his ministry, and try to explain the origin and practice of the faith that grew up around him. And who put this 'scripture' together? The church: the church that still remains to this today, teaching that tradition. If you reject that tradition, you must reject its ability to put together that scripture in the first place. One can't exist without the other. No church: no Bible.
A related problem is that while scripture is central, some traditions are not written down, and many developed before the Bible was compiled. Hence for the traditional church, as opposed to the protestant sects, there is no real distinction between scripture on the one hand, and the tradition/the church/the fathers on the other. They illuminate each other. Sola scriptura, on the other hand, has led to ten thousand churches in the US alone, each claiming to teach the true faith. That's happened because there is no agreement on what scripture teaches - because tradition has been abandoned.
This is probably the main (rational) reason I became Orthodox: I believe it teaches the unbroken tradition, and is the original and true church, and I wanted to learn from that. There are a lot of other reasons too - not least its beating mystical heart. But the best approach is to visit and see if this chimes.
When I was a Protestant looking into Orthodoxy, a friend once put it like this: Orthodox Christians believe that God gave humanity the Bible through the church, and He gave us a “classroom” in which to study it -- also the church. They are inseparable.
A type of animism was part of the Western European Christian world view before the 1600’s. C.S. Lewis mixed this viewpoint into his science fiction trilogy. Here is a quote from the book Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake concerning this “Before the 17th century, almos everyone took for granted that the universe was like an organism. In classical, medieval, and Renaissance Europe nature was alive” the context for these words is found in an excerpt from the book here https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/220323/science-set-free-by-rupert-sheldrake/9780770436728/excerpt
Yes, Daniel, we can talk to, relate to a tree! I do.
As regards the traditions of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy they see them as developments over time guided by the Holy Spirit even if there is little or no evidence for them in the Bible. The use of icons as a means to access spiritual and heavenly realities is an example. I think the invisible Jesus, his name and the Holy Spirit are quite adequate for that purpose. And our simple bodies and inner being and voices- “unto thee , Lord do I lift up my soul” “lifting holy hands” “this poor man cried and the Lord heard him” In fact the explanations for icons’ role are quite similar to one’s I have heard and read for the use of pictures of Hindu deities and gurus. Unbelief in the adequacy of Christ’s mediation and accessibility, that it needs aids, can take quite rarefied and spiritual and traditional forms. Even the Bible can be misused in our getting close to God - “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse come to me that you may have life” John 5:39-40
Jeff, the one thing about this which bothers me is that Paul McCartney talks to a tree which, if I understand correctly, he believes is a repository for or at least a conduit of the spirit of George Harrison.
I talk to a tree as a tree, as being a living being, since creation is one of the Living God, all created things have a livingness, an aliveness reflecting the nature of God, of many varied kinds, of course a tree doesn’t have a human aliveness or sentience or being. A tree has its own treeness version which we can know. For example I regularly walk in a remnant woods of California valley oaks. At certain age and size they attain a certain gravitas or presence, the nature of it is a continual fount of giving to their surroundings. It’s not worship of nature spirits but a brother, sister, friend relationship, with the difference as a son of Adam I have the privilege and duty of responsibly wielding life and death. In fact I think humanity in right wise, discerning relationship with creation would result in a more beautiful vibrant nature than one without the presence of humans. I have had a sensitivity to plants and also birds (to a lesser extent), since earliest childhood passed onto me by both parents and both sets of grandparents. Whatever McCartney is up to I think is quite different than this.
Whereabouts is this remnant woods located, if you don't mind saying. I was raised in the Valley, roughly equidistant between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The local park had several valley oaks in it, and gravitas is a good way to describe them.
"Unbelief in the adequacy of Christ’s mediation and accessibility, that it needs aids"
These "aids" do not indicate unbelief in Christ's adequacy. Just the opposite in fact. They point to the super-abundance of His grace and its power to transform nature. If bread and wine can become His body and blood, there is no reason why wood and paint can't become windows to heaven.
The underlying reason for this is theological. At the time of those pronouncements it was presumed (most likely correctly) that iconoclasts were heretical in their understanding of Christology, since the theological defense of icons is primarily Christological.
Your observation doesn't speak to the claim in your initial comment, however -- the idea that it stems from a belief in some inadequacy in Christ himself.
Here is a clarification of that statement. I certainly don’t think that Christ is inadequate as a mediator and the one that connects us to the Father and gives us the Holy Spirit. I am saying that human weakness and unbelief struggles with the simplicity of coming to Jesus as being sufficient and adds various at best superfluous props of which I think icons are one. I won’t bother to add a litany of scriptures showing this sufficiency of simple faith in Christ as I am sure you know them.
Also my being anathema hasn’t be removed, the list of 7th Ecumenical Council anathematized beliefs on icons didn’t include incorrect Christological beliefs. One could hold a correct view of our Lord and still be anathema due to views on icons.
A feature of iconoclasm was bad Christology. The heresies involved had been condemned previously, and those condemnations did not need repeating. As the Reformed scholar David Chilton once said, you can say whatever you want about icons, but it was the iconodules, not the iconoclasts, who got the Christology right.
"a litany of scriptures showing this sufficiency of simple faith in Christ"
You don't think the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils knew that litany as well? You can certainly disagree with their interpretations, but why should yours should be trusted instead?
I accept and know that participating in communion is a participation in the body and blood of Christ, though we don’t have enough in scripture to fully explicate what is happening, mystery in the highest sense remains. But to apply this mystery to icons is a logical leap and extrapolating beyond what has been clearly given to us and is a carry over from the surrounding Roman and Greek culture of the day and represents the normal human weakness when it comes to “we look not to the things that are seen” and “we walk by faith, not by sight” IMO
I also recognize iconology is a now essential aspect of the spirituality and practice of the EOC and will not be going away so I have a friendly attitude and don’t get contentious and condemning beyond sharing my viewpoint. God will make it all clear in eternity, for here “we know in part”
It's worth bearing in mind that nobody in Orthodoxy is 'worshipping' icons, nor is it ever claimed that a picture is necessary for a relationship with Christ. Icons are venerated as ways to lead us towards the spirit of those they convey, be it Christ, the Theotokos or the saints. In this sense they perform the same role as the Gospels, which are, after all, just bits of paper with ink on, but which help deepen our relationship with Christ. I suppose we could say the same about the symbol of a cross over the altar in a protestant church.
(I'll confess to being baffled by the protestant argument that if there is 'little or no evidence in the Bible' for something then it is somehow suspect. There is no evidence in the Bible for the use of guitars, organs, big screens, telephones or webcams, and yet plenty of protestant churches seem happy with those.)
Icons are also, it should be said, things of great beauty. Having watched iconographers at work, I understand that this work is also a process of prayer, repentance and artistic skill dedicated to God. The Orthodox believe that beauty in the service of God is a great thing. None of this is 'necessary' in some utilitarian sense, but faith and life would be much poorer with that sensibility alone.
Icons in Orthodoxy are seen as being more than artistically done illustrations that remind us of truths and persons. They are seen as two way magic windows that work when properly and reverently made. The icon is supposed to bring the being pictured into the environment. Because of the icons in a church those presences are there in the building. I was visiting an Orthodox church and I was standing in the sanctuary with the priest and a young man. The young man began to enthusiastically explain to me the power of the icons in room to bring in the presence of people pictured. The priest shushed him up, probably thinking it was too much for my Protestant ears.
As regards the Bible there are clear strictures about the use of images, I don’t think because icons are flat they are are free from those strictures, where veneration crosses into worship is hazy, bowing down, incensing are acts of worship, relabeling the act may not be enough.
There are no specific strictures against the uses of instruments and various technologies in church - though the use may not be wise and well thought through I admit, an unaware surrender to the Machine. I tend very basic in my approach, a group simply gathered together in the presence of the Lord with perhaps acoustical instruments and plain bread, wine, oil for anointing, and water for baptism.
'where veneration crosses into worship is hazy, bowing down, incensing are acts of worship, relabeling the act may not be enough.'
Bowing down is an act of worship, but we don't bow down to the icons, we bow down before them. If I bow before and then kiss an icon of christ, it is Christ I am worshipping, not the picture of him. That ought to be quite obvious.
Incensing is not an act of worship; if it was, the priest would not incense the congregation as well.
There are no strictures that I know of in the Bible against the use of pictures of holy people, any more than there are against computers, but perhaps you can point me to some I've missed. My view is that for the protestant argument to stand up, veneration has to be reclassified as worship. The Orthodox are very clear about the distinction.
It is true that the icon is a window through which we see the person represented. Some icons are also miracle-working. I appreciate this will not be to your taste! Sometimes I like simple worship myself. Too many icons, gold paintings and the like can be overwhelming. Nonetheless, I do believe in the power of these things, and I can also see the problems associated with the gutting of tradition.
There are people who would call me not-a-Protestant for this, though I'd disagree with them - but, Paul, as a preacher for one of the Protestant movements, I say you're absolutely right, here and in comments below.
Daniel, here's the article that I read way back in 1991 that set me on the trail to becoming Orthodox four years later. I was an Evangelical Episcopalian at the time, but a rather unsatisfied one, and had looked at Calvinism not long before. I would note that the author, Steve Hutchens, isn't Orthodox, but is I believe a Lutheran-educated theologian.
Daniel, we came into the Orthodox Church out of a Reformed background years ago. We attend a wonderful Orthodox parish in Portland/Beaverton area, St. John the Baptist. Our priest Fr. Matthew would be more than willing to share his perspective--he grew up in a Lutheran background.
Great! St. John is right across the street from Nike world headquarters and we get a lot of visitors from various backgrounds. Feel free to let the greeters (near the candles in the entry) know that you're new. They will probably know me and can connect us. :)
I'm getting Baptised into the Greek Orthodox Church soon, after many years as an Anglican. All I can say is after attending many different Churches, walking into this one my soul felt like it was home. I find it very humble that Orthodox Priests don't preach in services, just in case their words (as we are all sinners) influence the wrong path. They follow traditional services handed down from early Christianity. It's hard to explain in words, because it's a deep feeling that it's right. I never felt this way, this deeply, in other churches. Like Gretchen says, go for a visit.
It is plausible that the Machine will figure out how to make us biologically immortal this century. Would you take that bargain? One possible take is that you would be giving up on heaven by choosing to be immortal in your current body, but I think scripture supports choosing biological immortality.
Why? Because one of the temptations of the Devil to Jesus was that he jump off the highest tower of the temple, because, as the Son of God, the angels would surely bear him up. Jesus rejected him quoting, 'Thou shalt not test the Lord', and indeed, choosing death when life is available is testing the Lord, is jumping off the tower. Thinking you should let yourself die because heaven surely awaits, surely the angels will lift your soul there, is testing the Lord.
So yeah, if that happens, pick life, even if it is the unnatural option. I think it's different if someone starts claiming mind uploads are possible, as they certainly are not, or if the immortality offered is that they take your brain and put it into a metal body, as that would be monstrous, but being forever 21 is a good bargain. It may also seem like falling into temptation, like turning down heaven, but again, choosing death when life is available really is testing the Lord, and I don't see a way around that.
I don't think becoming one with AI is the way, and I think the crucifixion of Jesus was different because he wasn't testing the Lord there, he really did believe he was going to die, and also that his death there was the Lord's will. I don't think he knew or believed he would resurrect (if he knew he would resurrect, why was he afraid?).
If you want to say death is the Lord's will, then, doesn't that invalidate all of medicine? Biological immortality would just be the ultimate medical achievement, if we start interpreting all illness as the Lord's will (and aging is an illness, it's the body falling apart), we would have to reject medicine, as it is contrary to the Lord. Regardless of the answer to that one, medicine is certainly unnatural. Is everything unnatural contrary to the Lord?
As to the martyrs, I submit that if they believed they would go into heaven upon their death, they really were testing the Lord. I suspect, however, that they really believed in taking no thought for the morrow, and were not thinking at all as to what their death would entail.
They weren't dying to go to heaven, but to affirm a principle. I don't see what principle is being affirmed by choosing death in the face of biological immortality. Well, I suppose I see the principle of being one with nature, but to truly affirm that one would mean not just rejecting immortality, but all of medicine and also technology.
A wonderful reply. What I would add is that it's my understanding that crucifixion dislocates the major joints. I'm subject to a dislocated left patella, and when it happens, the pain can make me cry.
Our Lord had good reason to be afraid because of that alone, not to mention that He was going to be suffering the wrath of the Father for our sins.
I think I can very easily figure out how to live immortally, as there will always be something to experience, create, or learn.
> Wouldn't you if you knew that you have to go through the trials, the scourging, the mocking, the abuse, the being nailed onto a cross for all to see your agony, your nakedness, your bleeding wounds?
If I knew for a fact I would resurrect, I would be smiling through all that crap, as I would know it all to be basically fake and transient, that my victory is assured. Jesus' behavior was not consistent with such knowledge.
For the martyrs, if you are choosing death because you think that way lies salvation, that would be the same thing as if Jesus had stepped off the tower. Maybe they were thinking in that way, and if so, they were in error. If you're going to be a martyr, it has to be because of the principle you are affirming, there can be no expectation of reward.
I can face my mortality, because I do ultimately believe there is a beyond, but I also think it is no guarantee. Certainly, I don't believe it is so certain I would refuse an immortality pill.
Such a pill would shake things up so dramatically. Are you truly so certain that something that tells you 'Reject life! Choose death!' is not the very voice of Satan whispering to you?
Hi, Carlos, thank you for honestly sharing your ambivalence about “away from the body and at home with the Lord” 2 Corinthians 5:8 being real. Do I have permission to pray that the Spirit affirm to you the truth of these words of Jesus “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may also be” I think that is a place far better, more interesting, more aliveness than anything humans can contrive here. It says in 2 Peter “we look forward to a new heaven and a new earth” the new creation done by God, the ultimate reset and do over. I am assuming you have done what you can to believe in Jesus. Actually in your present take on reality your choice to extend your life here indefinitely if and when possible makes sense as being the better bet, not my take on reality however.
My position on Jesus is kinda heretical, which is I believe that he was the Son of God and resurrected, but he was also flawed and delusional on some points. Though there is scriptural support for that: Jesus himself said he was not good, which just begs the question, in which ways was he not good?
It's not so much that it seems the better bet, it's that choosing death in the name of heaven appears to have been rejected by Jesus, since he said it is testing the Lord. Sure other bits of the Bible contradict that, but really, just imagine the devil saying to you:
"Reject the immortality pill. For it is written: Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."
Is this not the exact same temptation he tried on Jesus, and doesn't it therefore merit the same response?
I would think the opposite, because Matthew 16:25 comes to mind: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” And Jesus saying “Take no thought for the morrow” concerning basic needs.
If you interpret these sayings in this manner, then it would be a sort of blasphemy to ever resort to medicine, as it is (when you really need it anyway) both an attempt to save one's life, and is definitely thinking of the morrow. Is that your view?
If you are going to use those sayings to argue against an immortality pill, I don't see what rule allows you to ignore them when it comes to medicine in general. An immortality pill would just be the ultimate medicine. You can't even invoke common sense like you seemingly tried to do, as the obvious common sense choice is to take the pill.
Jun 7, 2023·edited Jun 11, 2023Liked by Paul Kingsnorth
Here's the common sense for you. Hebrews 9:27: For it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment.
Until then, we are to glorify God as we can. For most people, in addition to overt worship, that will include education, work, marriage, family. For some, all or part of this is not possible. And there are always the many who die in early life or middle age.
It's obvious that you're a' trolling, and I'm not going to waste any more time on this.
I am no troll, I really do think it is an issue to choose death if it becomes optional. I mean, it basically breaks the Bible: if this comes to exist this would mean there is no appointed death because death would become a choice. It is one thing to face your inevitable death, but if death is not inevitable, if you actually have to choose death for it to actually happen, what then? It resembles jumping off the temple too closely for me to just say things are as simple as rejecting the immortality pill.
The only way to fully glorified and receive a new body and eternal life is to die physically because these bodies are corrupted . Immortality in the flesh is a trap of the devil.
Isn't this the exact same thing as jumping off the tower? And if this is so, don't you have to reject all of medicine, which is simply the effort to save this corrupted body?
If Jesus does not condemn medicine, then Jesus does not condemn the immortality pill. If the only way to receive eternal life is with the death of our bodies as the parent commenter said, then it makes no sense to attempt to cure lethal diseases. Why run away from eternal life?
Treating our sicknesses to prolong our service and love of others here is good. Also our friends, neighbors, family value our presence, it’s not all about what’s best for us. We will pass through death soon enough. In a blink of an eye I reached my sixties. Paul directly referred to the why not just die and go to Jesus as it is a better deal concept in Philippians 1:21-25 and his conclusion was it’s better for him to stay to love and be loved for the time being.
There is no immortality pill so this is all theoretical anyway and idle talk. It is worse than foolish to boast about how you would smile through your crucifixion.
I respect your right to take the pill . But the Bible says that God allotted man a lifetime of 120 years. This world is like a testing ground. It’s not our permanent home.
No, I wouldn't say that at all. Trying to live forever is not the same thing as treating sickness or pain. God will decide when it's my time to go, but that doesn't mean I will try to speed up the date. The thing is our souls are immortal already. The question is where our soul will speed eternity after our bodies die.
If aging becomes treatable, it is a sickness. Actually, the only reason we don't see it as a sickness is that it has no treatment yet. Isn't letting yourself die if the option to live is available speeding up the date by quite a lot?
Don't worry, I am not retiring yet.
New here but really appreciating what you have shared here. I wish you a delightful summer holiday and look forward to whatever new ideas you will unfold further along.
https://thesymbolicworld.com/news/the-snow-white-kickstarter
Enjoy a well-earned rest, sir.
Did anyone else find that this week was a great opportunity to internally say, "absolutely no, Satan?" I've seen things coming out from Apple and their new blinding pro...whoops.. I mean.... "Vision" Pro device. It feels as if the moment was given to us as an opportunity to practically opt-out. Is this where we begin to say no more?
For those of you without a phone, you've already done this bit. But for some of us new luddite-ish folks, this feels like a great moment to stand firm and just say... "I'm out." Or am I making too much of this?
I’ve been feeling the same way. You are not alone!
At $3,500 a pop (for the VR headset) I’m not even remotely tempted 😂
Yes, I have seen lots of reactions along these lines. And their promotional video was very sad. The father didn't bother taking the goggles off to interact with his child.
From a physiological perspective, it seems like we have not learnt our lesson from the pandemic about the importance of faces and visible emotions. Masks covered the mouth hiding the smile for a time (justifiably or not depending on one's views). Now Apple is releasing this which covers the eyes - obscuring a feature which gives us some of our most intimate encounters and a rich display of emotions. You become more like a machine whilst giving up one of your most precious human features. It is a dehumanising technology - not as Apple would like you to believe a life - enhancing one.
The father not attending to his family stuck out to me too. I felt it was surreal. It's as if Apple was whispering its intentions to us during the whole ad. Subtle messages like "your kids are fine without you," or "who needs to play when you can be productive." Along the lines of your notion of the false virtues of speed and efficiency. "Look how much you can get done. Take the time you spend with your children and do something valuable."
Dehumanizing is a great way to think of it for sure. This is certainly just another step for "them" to fully integrate the participants into The Machine. But most will simply go along. It's become so rare now to have another human look you in the eye during a social encounter... Why not go ahead and cover your eyes entirely?
And this morning this came to me . . . https://open.substack.com/pub/dsimpson/p/reasons-to-be-cheerful?r=3ezew&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I have recently discovered your work and am interested in reading the series in order. Is there a list of titles and publication dates I may reference to plan my reading?
There will be soon. Watch this space for the next few weeks!
It has been warm and sunny for days here too - in Essex, UK - "the land of eternal sunshine" (or at least that's how I jokingly refer to my home county).
Recently in preparation for a reading group I host on my substack, I read Wendell Berry's essay, The Making of a Marginal Farm. What struck me was his observation that hillsides were inhospitable (unsuitable) places for tractors and thus horse-drawn tools had to be used. Thus in marginal areas, old traditional ways prosper and modern machines often struggle to get a foothold. In lowlands/more productive areas, these traditional practices have to fight against modern tech and machines' efficiencies and competitive advantage (and corporate advertising) - and by and large, lose the battle and become relics.
So my working theory is that marginal lands and places can become "refuges from the machine" and I am currently working this into an essay. I am interested to hear others' thoughts on this. And if one has the time, I thoroughly recommend Berry's essay - it will pay dividends to read it.
That is one of my favourite Berry essays as far as the sheer joy of reading it.
Indeed, it is the most personal one of his I have read - and that shines through the pages.
Link to the essay?
Not sure if it’s online anywhere but it is in the collection ‘A World Ending Fire’. I’m not sure what collection it was originally published in. Anybody know?
Had to do some digging, but it's from a 1981 collection called 'Recollected Essays,' which was reprinted in 1998. Don't know if it appeared in any other collections.
The “link” is your hands which hold the book for your eyes to enjoy. (Meant to be a playful comment, no disrespect intended). This seems particularly appropriate for Berry who did/does not use a computer to write. He uses a pencil. His wife types out the manuscript on a manual typewriter. Convivial tools, just like those described in the essay!
Currently trying to do a online loan of the book through library. I can’t buy any more books.
I have books stacked in odd places all over the house. It is a bit of a problem 😂
Check out Internet Archive. They have the Berry book "Recollected Essays". archive.org. If you want to read it online.
I would agree with you theory about marginal lands, (which is about limitations in general). The beauty of having land unsuitable for tractor use is that the possibility of using one is eliminated for you. You are thus sheltered from the machine by a sort of natural grace. Thus submitted you must seek another way. The world is actually overflowing with such Grace. It is the machine, and all that drives it, which seeks to replace Grace with limitlessness. If one cannot relocate to marginal lands, one could find other ways to make themselves marginal.
Thank you for the reference. I can't remember if I have read that one, but am going to revisit it. I have used both tractors, horses (and oxen) on hillsides and it is just unsettling to be on a tractor. There are places a tractor will just flip or roll, but an animal, like a person can adjust its stance to the ground. (Maybe there is a metaphor there somewhere?) Your idea of "refuges from the machine" is a good one.
I suggest that - just as agribusiness is part of the Machine - there are "marginal lands" as you describe them in the edges and abandoned spaces of the industrial world. This is territory that is only suitable for the "cooked" barbarians to inhabit, but the combination of derelict physical spaces with the knowledge of having been abandoned by "the prosperous world" even in sight of its gleaming towers engenders a readiness to think of alternatives.
This week marks the sixth anniversary of the burning of Grenfell Tower in London. A friend was working with the survivors for a time. She lived in a grotty single-room flat five minutes walk from the tower, and right on the border with Rich London: across the road from her were boutiques selling blouses at £1000 a pop.
This discussion is important because it opens up answers to the big question of every age: How can I resist evil?
For some reason the accompanying photo and your statement, “Here is a cow in the Burren enjoying the impacts of man-made climate change,” brought tears… we human beings are so short sighted. Thank you for your writings on the Machine and inspiring so many to change tact. Blessings to you and all your readers.
Well we are all very much looking forward to the next essay. Now I have one question that is pretty frivolous but here it goes. Have you (or any other readers here) seen the movie "Wild Mountain Thyme" ? It is set in Ireland, with apparently terrible accents, but they sound passable to my Canadian ear. I found it charming, and upon repeated viewing, rather moving. Here is one of my favorite lines:
“There’s these green fields… and the animals living off them. And over that there’s us… living off the animals. And over that there’s that which tends to us… and lives off us maybe. Whatever that is… it holds me here.“
And another exchange:
“Do you still hear the voice in the fields?” she asks.
“I don’t know," he replies.
“It’s not a modern idea,” she says.
“I’m not a modern man.”
Whatever this movie is, and I'm no movie critic, it feels refreshingly out of step with everything else Hollywood produces, and full of the truly human stuff.
I watched it a few months ago and loved the simplicity of it. Bit weird what goes on in his head (I won't spoil it), but lovely film. One of those that makes you remember the important stuff in life.
I started a little poem, inspired, or maybe instigated, by your last essay, Paul, and it goes like this:
So long to the West:
Having come together in a Göbekli Tepe
Of the mind—“the view from nowhere”
Let's begin our ancient wandering afresh:
Let's wander as the flowers do—every day
Closer and closer to the sun, but not by much,
Every day drinking from the Earth...
(Hope you get some good summer rest)
-g
Was fortunate enough to attend the June 3, Dublin 'Christ, Creation, and the Cave: Seeking the Bush Soul of Christianity' event featuring Paul, Martin Shaw and Jonathan Pageau. I've yet to sort through the handful of photos I took, but you can at least see one, of the three speakers together, in my latest essay:
https://optera.substack.com/p/ready-player-done
Quick impressions from a non-Christian: three guys who've seen *something*, had a brush with the divine, and are trying to carry word of the spirit of that experience back to a prosaic and increasingly indifferent (when not openly hostile) culture. Unsurprisingly, all appear in the flesh just as they do in many a video or photo, though Paul is this lanky beanpole of a guy, taller than one expects, and looks like nothing so much as a farmer from a Norman Rockwell painting, though I am not sure Rockwell ever painted any English guys.
There was a really nice spirit to the gathering, on a stunningly beautiful day in Dublin, and a sense that this little space was for the moment the centre of the turning world; that you wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Pageau was often deferred to as resident expert on the scripture by Christian rookies Kingsnorth and Shaw. Martin Shaw has a way of captivating a room that's hard to describe. It was like being in the presence of Whitman or something. You just want to listen to him riff all day. There was also a strange sadness or weariness to him, or at least that's how it struck me.
Paul's turn at the mic saw him get right down to business, complete with set of slides. My impression is he's basically a guy operating at a rarefied level on both hemispheres of the right/left brain split. In a debate on any subject he's considered most would be hard-pressed to counter him. Unless you're operating somewhere near peak Hitchens-level I wouldn't advise trying it.
I haven't seen anyone post video or audio anywhere, but that doesn't mean it isn't out there somewhere. You can hear a bit about it here from an actual Christian:
https://youtu.be/iA2Sr6diXPQ
As many of us strive to live more of our lives offline, I'm curious: do readers here have suggestions for print publications that speak to the topics we are used to reading here at the Abbey? I know many of us would be delighted to find Paul's newsletter in our mailboxes instead of our inboxes, but until that day...what periodicals or newsletters would you recommend? (I'll keep reading here too, of course!)
Front Porch Republic's 'Local Culture' would be one. Paul is speaking at their conference in October.
My husband and I have our tickets! I'll look at their print publication; thank you.
I suggest with hesitation the monthly magazine, Chronicles, published by The Rockford Institute, in Rockford, Illinois. My hesitation is caused by my own failure to keep up with the magazine in the last few years.
I was never disappointed and rarely offended by it. I don't know where in the world you are, so I'll tell you that in American political science terms of twenty years ago, it would have been classed as a paleoconservative venture, by far the most interesting thing of its type I've ever read. Now, of course, we're enlightened by the knowledge that what these monsters are really up to is the promotion of heteronormativity, white supremacy, patriarchy, and of course, hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.
They were writing in different terms about the sorts of things Paul writes about long ago. I would define them as implicitly Catholic but congenial to all Christians, lovers of the local as opposed to the more distant, despisers of contemporary popular culture and Leviathan. They love the things Paul and most of his readers love and loathe what we loathe.
I advise you go to their website and have a look.
Front Porch Republic's editor Jeff Bilbro does a clearinghouse every Saturday where he lists, summarizes, and provides links to articles and essays from other sources that are related to these things. Here's the link to this past Saturday's list as an example:
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/06/money-the-wild-and-the-metaverse/
Also, The New Atlantis is a good print quarterly that features articles and reviews pertaining to the relationship between tech and culture.
Ivan Illich's books are a fascinating read. You could try 'Deschooling Society' and 'Limits of Medicine'.
I've had these books on my list for a while, but am concerned that they'll be over my head (like much of what I read here, honestly!)-- but we never grow without stretching ourselves. Thanks for the nudge.
"Deschooling Society" is one of the most important books I've read in a very long time, and I read it recently. The other book about medicine I know as "Medical Nemesis", but maybe they're not the same. David Cayley has devoted his life ? to bringing Ivan Illich's books to a wider audience, and he has a book of conversations that is a good place to start with Illich, and very readable ; somebody interviewing him, and asking questions about Illich.
Thank you, Debra!
I recently re-read Solzhenitsyn's famous commencement address, and it made me think instantly of your fantastic recent essay. Here, with apologies for the length, is Solzhenitsyn at Harvard in 1978:
"How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.
The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man’s physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.
And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century."
Is that not perfect? If only Harvard had listened...
full speech here:
https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart
Tangentially related, in the shameless self promotion department, please don't miss my piece on CS Lewis and rainbows at the Federalist today:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/07/how-to-protect-your-childrens-innocent-awe-of-the-rainbow/
Thank you for all you do!
gaty.substack.com
I think that strange things happen when we imagine that from ONE vantage point in the world, and in our experience, we can see everything that is going on in society ; when we erase the different planes in society : private, intimate, public, and the differences they make in who we are and how we think and act. Ironically enough, this position can be resumed by the word, "absolute", which comes to us from the Latin "ab-solus", a particular perspective in Latin grammar (I think, but am not sure).
There is a phrase that goes : "Man cannot live by bread alone".
There are different ways of looking at that phrase, but it summarizes the tension of the human condition. "Man can not live by bread... alone." That does not mean that bread doens't enter into the picture somewhere. Nor does it mean that bread SHOULDN'T enter into the picture... somewhere.
But how to put together spiritual, material (as in corporal...), emotional, in Man ? How to put Man together ?
A tall order.
Strangely enough, in recent times I have found myself in a somewhat... missionary position in public space, with people around me in personal encounters, often just one or two people, and never a crowd or a big group. I have seen how much people are starving for personal contact, and to hear that they are NOT terrible sinners according to a current ecological religion that promotes the idea that WE have sinned, and our sins/overpopulation are taking the world down. Ecological hellfire and brimstone. I am not sure it is very... productive, shall we say. It does not encourage personal responsibility but hopelessness in many people at least.
Maybe it would be correct to say that there is no way to look somebody in the eye, and speak to them with frankness when you are broad-casting, even over a video ? (two years of silence for that phrase in the Gospels when Jesus says "Come with me and I shall make you fishers of.. men." So... what was wrong with being fishers of fish ? And what was wrong with being a self employed middle class carpenter, while we're at it ?...) What are the limits of broadcasting ? What suffers when you start adressing large numbers of people ? Are there ways of doing it that are more acceptable, that don't become imPERSONAL ? I personally believe that Jesus himself was deeply divided on the problem of addressing people, or talking about them as categories (the poor), and the problem of addressing them as unique, and singular in space and time, and I can see evidence of this in the Gospels.
What happens to us as physical bodies, assigned to a PLACE and a time, which makes us singular and unique, when we are broadcasted to, or broadcasting ?
As for mercy and sacrifice (and forgiveness, let's not forget that one), for sure we talked more about them in the past, but there can be miles between talking about them, and practicing them.
Maybe we have become the sacrificial victims of our own success ? We have carried the evangelical message first, of... love and charity, then of the "rights" of Man to the whole world, and we are suffering from having nowhere else to... broadcast to ?
For the "moral poverty" at the end of this quotation, does this mean our tendancy to ask "what is it GOOD FOR ?" when assessing an object, or... a person ? in our world/experience ? I don't know.
Enjoy the weather Paul. Here in New Jersey, we are in drought (never saw this in May) and under a thick haze of smoke from fires in Nova Scotia. Normally, temps are around 80 degrees F this time of year, but the smoke cover (non nuclear winter) has the midday temps below 60 F. Smoke smelled so bad I thought the house was on fire. Pray. we get rain, soon.
Hi all,
I have had the fortune to find a healthy, thriving church community in Portland Oregon, and through the work of the Holy Spirit I have been persuaded to join Christ and his church body through baptism. My baptism is scheduled to occur in the coming weeks.
However, my church follows the Reformed Baptist tradition, and its elders have expressed concern to me that Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have traditions that appear to be in conflict with the Holy Word or don't have a basis in the Word ("extra-biblical"). A common theme is a concern about holding too closely to particular practices, and believing that it's having one's heart turned toward Jesus that is most important. I'm a baby Christian in terms of theology, but my church elders appear to be well educated in church history and theology themselves.
While I currently feel comfortable with my church, I do feel tension in that Eastern Orthodoxy does appear to be a more holistic faith with its ancient traditions, the reverence of the Virgin Mary, the saints, and perhaps a greater openness to respecting and paying attention to the relationships of God's Creation. Solely relying on the Bible for spiritual truth has left me feeling conflicted in my animist beliefs.
I would be very interested in comparisons of Protestantism vs. Eastern Orthodoxy and why either one feels more persuasive as more faithfully following Jesus.
You may enjoy the book Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, by Andrew Stephen Damick. It compares Orthodoxy to several different religions and other Christian denominations, and lays out the differences.
I can give you my perspective--though I'm not EO, currently Roman-rite Catholic, but most likely becoming Eastern Catholic before too long. I met Jesus at age 13 in a Pentecostal church. I even attended one of my denomination's Bible colleges in hopes to become a youth pastor. I soured on all of that for various reasons and became more Evangelical. Anyway, I jumped ship eleven years ago for Rome because my wife did not like Constantinople.
A general contrast between Protestantism and RC and EO is that Protestants tend to worship in their heads. The body plays a small role, emotions slightly larger, but it's truly about what you think, "believing" the right things. That's a bit of a simplification, but it's not a distortion, either. I have found in Catholicism, and adjacently, in Orthodoxy, treasures that the Reformation tried to bury. Tools to train the heart to fight against sin and fall more deeply in love with Jesus are what these two strains offer. History, sacraments, Tradition are what you will find in both branches. For me, the pull to the East comes from a much more connected view to the natural world than what I find in the Roman rite. Here's something I recently had published that speaks more to what you'd find in the older traditions than in any Protestant church: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/05/blessings-to-impart/
I should add I am immensely grateful for my Pentecostal upbringing in introducing me to Jesus and encouraging Bible reading and memorization.
Have you visited an Orthodox parish. I hope you will research in person what already appears to you more holistic, before committing to baptism. You want to be in “the church which is his body, the fullness of Him who filleth all in all.” Eph 1:23
For me, it became clear after decades elsewhere, that the Orthodox Christian life is that fullness.
God bless you!
Interesting question. I'll offer my small perspective too, but second what Gretchen says below: visting a church, experiencing liturgy and speaking to others, and to priests, is the best way to understand. Orthodoxy is deeply experiential.
To me, and to Orthodox people (and Catholics) the protestant notion that something called 'scripture' can be separated from something called 'tradition' is the heart of the protestant error. What is 'scripture', after all? It's a series of books pulled together in the fourth century that tell the life of Jesus, and his ministry, and try to explain the origin and practice of the faith that grew up around him. And who put this 'scripture' together? The church: the church that still remains to this today, teaching that tradition. If you reject that tradition, you must reject its ability to put together that scripture in the first place. One can't exist without the other. No church: no Bible.
A related problem is that while scripture is central, some traditions are not written down, and many developed before the Bible was compiled. Hence for the traditional church, as opposed to the protestant sects, there is no real distinction between scripture on the one hand, and the tradition/the church/the fathers on the other. They illuminate each other. Sola scriptura, on the other hand, has led to ten thousand churches in the US alone, each claiming to teach the true faith. That's happened because there is no agreement on what scripture teaches - because tradition has been abandoned.
This is probably the main (rational) reason I became Orthodox: I believe it teaches the unbroken tradition, and is the original and true church, and I wanted to learn from that. There are a lot of other reasons too - not least its beating mystical heart. But the best approach is to visit and see if this chimes.
When I was a Protestant looking into Orthodoxy, a friend once put it like this: Orthodox Christians believe that God gave humanity the Bible through the church, and He gave us a “classroom” in which to study it -- also the church. They are inseparable.
A type of animism was part of the Western European Christian world view before the 1600’s. C.S. Lewis mixed this viewpoint into his science fiction trilogy. Here is a quote from the book Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake concerning this “Before the 17th century, almos everyone took for granted that the universe was like an organism. In classical, medieval, and Renaissance Europe nature was alive” the context for these words is found in an excerpt from the book here https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/220323/science-set-free-by-rupert-sheldrake/9780770436728/excerpt
Yes, Daniel, we can talk to, relate to a tree! I do.
As regards the traditions of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy they see them as developments over time guided by the Holy Spirit even if there is little or no evidence for them in the Bible. The use of icons as a means to access spiritual and heavenly realities is an example. I think the invisible Jesus, his name and the Holy Spirit are quite adequate for that purpose. And our simple bodies and inner being and voices- “unto thee , Lord do I lift up my soul” “lifting holy hands” “this poor man cried and the Lord heard him” In fact the explanations for icons’ role are quite similar to one’s I have heard and read for the use of pictures of Hindu deities and gurus. Unbelief in the adequacy of Christ’s mediation and accessibility, that it needs aids, can take quite rarefied and spiritual and traditional forms. Even the Bible can be misused in our getting close to God - “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse come to me that you may have life” John 5:39-40
Jeff, the one thing about this which bothers me is that Paul McCartney talks to a tree which, if I understand correctly, he believes is a repository for or at least a conduit of the spirit of George Harrison.
I talk to a tree as a tree, as being a living being, since creation is one of the Living God, all created things have a livingness, an aliveness reflecting the nature of God, of many varied kinds, of course a tree doesn’t have a human aliveness or sentience or being. A tree has its own treeness version which we can know. For example I regularly walk in a remnant woods of California valley oaks. At certain age and size they attain a certain gravitas or presence, the nature of it is a continual fount of giving to their surroundings. It’s not worship of nature spirits but a brother, sister, friend relationship, with the difference as a son of Adam I have the privilege and duty of responsibly wielding life and death. In fact I think humanity in right wise, discerning relationship with creation would result in a more beautiful vibrant nature than one without the presence of humans. I have had a sensitivity to plants and also birds (to a lesser extent), since earliest childhood passed onto me by both parents and both sets of grandparents. Whatever McCartney is up to I think is quite different than this.
Indeed! Thanks for clarifying. I'm sure you know this from Chesterton: "Nature is not our mother, she is our sister."
Whereabouts is this remnant woods located, if you don't mind saying. I was raised in the Valley, roughly equidistant between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The local park had several valley oaks in it, and gravitas is a good way to describe them.
Visalia
Ah, Mooney Grove. I spent many happy hours there. We lived on W. Myrtle.
My home town is Lemoncove, and I recently wrote about an oak tree I love: http://gretchenjoanna.com/2023/05/31/revisiting-my-valley-oak/
"Unbelief in the adequacy of Christ’s mediation and accessibility, that it needs aids"
These "aids" do not indicate unbelief in Christ's adequacy. Just the opposite in fact. They point to the super-abundance of His grace and its power to transform nature. If bread and wine can become His body and blood, there is no reason why wood and paint can't become windows to heaven.
Did some research and discovered that my attitude about icons makes me anathema according to the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church based on a council happening in 787. Oh well I can live with it in peace. https://russianicons.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/the-real-origin-of-the-eastern-orthodox-icon/
The underlying reason for this is theological. At the time of those pronouncements it was presumed (most likely correctly) that iconoclasts were heretical in their understanding of Christology, since the theological defense of icons is primarily Christological.
Your observation doesn't speak to the claim in your initial comment, however -- the idea that it stems from a belief in some inadequacy in Christ himself.
Here is a clarification of that statement. I certainly don’t think that Christ is inadequate as a mediator and the one that connects us to the Father and gives us the Holy Spirit. I am saying that human weakness and unbelief struggles with the simplicity of coming to Jesus as being sufficient and adds various at best superfluous props of which I think icons are one. I won’t bother to add a litany of scriptures showing this sufficiency of simple faith in Christ as I am sure you know them.
Also my being anathema hasn’t be removed, the list of 7th Ecumenical Council anathematized beliefs on icons didn’t include incorrect Christological beliefs. One could hold a correct view of our Lord and still be anathema due to views on icons.
A feature of iconoclasm was bad Christology. The heresies involved had been condemned previously, and those condemnations did not need repeating. As the Reformed scholar David Chilton once said, you can say whatever you want about icons, but it was the iconodules, not the iconoclasts, who got the Christology right.
"a litany of scriptures showing this sufficiency of simple faith in Christ"
You don't think the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils knew that litany as well? You can certainly disagree with their interpretations, but why should yours should be trusted instead?
I accept and know that participating in communion is a participation in the body and blood of Christ, though we don’t have enough in scripture to fully explicate what is happening, mystery in the highest sense remains. But to apply this mystery to icons is a logical leap and extrapolating beyond what has been clearly given to us and is a carry over from the surrounding Roman and Greek culture of the day and represents the normal human weakness when it comes to “we look not to the things that are seen” and “we walk by faith, not by sight” IMO
I also recognize iconology is a now essential aspect of the spirituality and practice of the EOC and will not be going away so I have a friendly attitude and don’t get contentious and condemning beyond sharing my viewpoint. God will make it all clear in eternity, for here “we know in part”
It's worth bearing in mind that nobody in Orthodoxy is 'worshipping' icons, nor is it ever claimed that a picture is necessary for a relationship with Christ. Icons are venerated as ways to lead us towards the spirit of those they convey, be it Christ, the Theotokos or the saints. In this sense they perform the same role as the Gospels, which are, after all, just bits of paper with ink on, but which help deepen our relationship with Christ. I suppose we could say the same about the symbol of a cross over the altar in a protestant church.
(I'll confess to being baffled by the protestant argument that if there is 'little or no evidence in the Bible' for something then it is somehow suspect. There is no evidence in the Bible for the use of guitars, organs, big screens, telephones or webcams, and yet plenty of protestant churches seem happy with those.)
Icons are also, it should be said, things of great beauty. Having watched iconographers at work, I understand that this work is also a process of prayer, repentance and artistic skill dedicated to God. The Orthodox believe that beauty in the service of God is a great thing. None of this is 'necessary' in some utilitarian sense, but faith and life would be much poorer with that sensibility alone.
Icons in Orthodoxy are seen as being more than artistically done illustrations that remind us of truths and persons. They are seen as two way magic windows that work when properly and reverently made. The icon is supposed to bring the being pictured into the environment. Because of the icons in a church those presences are there in the building. I was visiting an Orthodox church and I was standing in the sanctuary with the priest and a young man. The young man began to enthusiastically explain to me the power of the icons in room to bring in the presence of people pictured. The priest shushed him up, probably thinking it was too much for my Protestant ears.
Your explanation of the use of the icon is quite similar to what Hindus say about their use of images. https://www.hinduamerican.org/blog/what-idolatry-means-in-hinduism/
As regards the Bible there are clear strictures about the use of images, I don’t think because icons are flat they are are free from those strictures, where veneration crosses into worship is hazy, bowing down, incensing are acts of worship, relabeling the act may not be enough.
There are no specific strictures against the uses of instruments and various technologies in church - though the use may not be wise and well thought through I admit, an unaware surrender to the Machine. I tend very basic in my approach, a group simply gathered together in the presence of the Lord with perhaps acoustical instruments and plain bread, wine, oil for anointing, and water for baptism.
'where veneration crosses into worship is hazy, bowing down, incensing are acts of worship, relabeling the act may not be enough.'
Bowing down is an act of worship, but we don't bow down to the icons, we bow down before them. If I bow before and then kiss an icon of christ, it is Christ I am worshipping, not the picture of him. That ought to be quite obvious.
Incensing is not an act of worship; if it was, the priest would not incense the congregation as well.
There are no strictures that I know of in the Bible against the use of pictures of holy people, any more than there are against computers, but perhaps you can point me to some I've missed. My view is that for the protestant argument to stand up, veneration has to be reclassified as worship. The Orthodox are very clear about the distinction.
It is true that the icon is a window through which we see the person represented. Some icons are also miracle-working. I appreciate this will not be to your taste! Sometimes I like simple worship myself. Too many icons, gold paintings and the like can be overwhelming. Nonetheless, I do believe in the power of these things, and I can also see the problems associated with the gutting of tradition.
There are people who would call me not-a-Protestant for this, though I'd disagree with them - but, Paul, as a preacher for one of the Protestant movements, I say you're absolutely right, here and in comments below.
Daniel, here's the article that I read way back in 1991 that set me on the trail to becoming Orthodox four years later. I was an Evangelical Episcopalian at the time, but a rather unsatisfied one, and had looked at Calvinism not long before. I would note that the author, Steve Hutchens, isn't Orthodox, but is I believe a Lutheran-educated theologian.
https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=04-02-003-f
If it's S.I. Hutchens, which I imagine it is, I think he's Reformed/Presbyterian.
No, it's S.M. -- he's been a senior editor and writer at Touchstone for decades.
Right. I thought I'd written, "S.M." Thanks for fixing it.
Daniel, we came into the Orthodox Church out of a Reformed background years ago. We attend a wonderful Orthodox parish in Portland/Beaverton area, St. John the Baptist. Our priest Fr. Matthew would be more than willing to share his perspective--he grew up in a Lutheran background.
I would be interested in hearing his perspective. I think I will head over there this Sunday.
Great! St. John is right across the street from Nike world headquarters and we get a lot of visitors from various backgrounds. Feel free to let the greeters (near the candles in the entry) know that you're new. They will probably know me and can connect us. :)
I'm getting Baptised into the Greek Orthodox Church soon, after many years as an Anglican. All I can say is after attending many different Churches, walking into this one my soul felt like it was home. I find it very humble that Orthodox Priests don't preach in services, just in case their words (as we are all sinners) influence the wrong path. They follow traditional services handed down from early Christianity. It's hard to explain in words, because it's a deep feeling that it's right. I never felt this way, this deeply, in other churches. Like Gretchen says, go for a visit.
It is plausible that the Machine will figure out how to make us biologically immortal this century. Would you take that bargain? One possible take is that you would be giving up on heaven by choosing to be immortal in your current body, but I think scripture supports choosing biological immortality.
Why? Because one of the temptations of the Devil to Jesus was that he jump off the highest tower of the temple, because, as the Son of God, the angels would surely bear him up. Jesus rejected him quoting, 'Thou shalt not test the Lord', and indeed, choosing death when life is available is testing the Lord, is jumping off the tower. Thinking you should let yourself die because heaven surely awaits, surely the angels will lift your soul there, is testing the Lord.
So yeah, if that happens, pick life, even if it is the unnatural option. I think it's different if someone starts claiming mind uploads are possible, as they certainly are not, or if the immortality offered is that they take your brain and put it into a metal body, as that would be monstrous, but being forever 21 is a good bargain. It may also seem like falling into temptation, like turning down heaven, but again, choosing death when life is available really is testing the Lord, and I don't see a way around that.
I don't think becoming one with AI is the way, and I think the crucifixion of Jesus was different because he wasn't testing the Lord there, he really did believe he was going to die, and also that his death there was the Lord's will. I don't think he knew or believed he would resurrect (if he knew he would resurrect, why was he afraid?).
If you want to say death is the Lord's will, then, doesn't that invalidate all of medicine? Biological immortality would just be the ultimate medical achievement, if we start interpreting all illness as the Lord's will (and aging is an illness, it's the body falling apart), we would have to reject medicine, as it is contrary to the Lord. Regardless of the answer to that one, medicine is certainly unnatural. Is everything unnatural contrary to the Lord?
As to the martyrs, I submit that if they believed they would go into heaven upon their death, they really were testing the Lord. I suspect, however, that they really believed in taking no thought for the morrow, and were not thinking at all as to what their death would entail.
They weren't dying to go to heaven, but to affirm a principle. I don't see what principle is being affirmed by choosing death in the face of biological immortality. Well, I suppose I see the principle of being one with nature, but to truly affirm that one would mean not just rejecting immortality, but all of medicine and also technology.
A wonderful reply. What I would add is that it's my understanding that crucifixion dislocates the major joints. I'm subject to a dislocated left patella, and when it happens, the pain can make me cry.
Our Lord had good reason to be afraid because of that alone, not to mention that He was going to be suffering the wrath of the Father for our sins.
I think I can very easily figure out how to live immortally, as there will always be something to experience, create, or learn.
> Wouldn't you if you knew that you have to go through the trials, the scourging, the mocking, the abuse, the being nailed onto a cross for all to see your agony, your nakedness, your bleeding wounds?
If I knew for a fact I would resurrect, I would be smiling through all that crap, as I would know it all to be basically fake and transient, that my victory is assured. Jesus' behavior was not consistent with such knowledge.
For the martyrs, if you are choosing death because you think that way lies salvation, that would be the same thing as if Jesus had stepped off the tower. Maybe they were thinking in that way, and if so, they were in error. If you're going to be a martyr, it has to be because of the principle you are affirming, there can be no expectation of reward.
I can face my mortality, because I do ultimately believe there is a beyond, but I also think it is no guarantee. Certainly, I don't believe it is so certain I would refuse an immortality pill.
Such a pill would shake things up so dramatically. Are you truly so certain that something that tells you 'Reject life! Choose death!' is not the very voice of Satan whispering to you?
Hi, Carlos, thank you for honestly sharing your ambivalence about “away from the body and at home with the Lord” 2 Corinthians 5:8 being real. Do I have permission to pray that the Spirit affirm to you the truth of these words of Jesus “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may also be” I think that is a place far better, more interesting, more aliveness than anything humans can contrive here. It says in 2 Peter “we look forward to a new heaven and a new earth” the new creation done by God, the ultimate reset and do over. I am assuming you have done what you can to believe in Jesus. Actually in your present take on reality your choice to extend your life here indefinitely if and when possible makes sense as being the better bet, not my take on reality however.
Jeff, my assumption is the opposite of that. I do thank you for taking him on. I don't have the patience.
My position on Jesus is kinda heretical, which is I believe that he was the Son of God and resurrected, but he was also flawed and delusional on some points. Though there is scriptural support for that: Jesus himself said he was not good, which just begs the question, in which ways was he not good?
It's not so much that it seems the better bet, it's that choosing death in the name of heaven appears to have been rejected by Jesus, since he said it is testing the Lord. Sure other bits of the Bible contradict that, but really, just imagine the devil saying to you:
"Reject the immortality pill. For it is written: Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."
Is this not the exact same temptation he tried on Jesus, and doesn't it therefore merit the same response?
I would think the opposite, because Matthew 16:25 comes to mind: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” And Jesus saying “Take no thought for the morrow” concerning basic needs.
If you interpret these sayings in this manner, then it would be a sort of blasphemy to ever resort to medicine, as it is (when you really need it anyway) both an attempt to save one's life, and is definitely thinking of the morrow. Is that your view?
If you are going to use those sayings to argue against an immortality pill, I don't see what rule allows you to ignore them when it comes to medicine in general. An immortality pill would just be the ultimate medicine. You can't even invoke common sense like you seemingly tried to do, as the obvious common sense choice is to take the pill.
Here's the common sense for you. Hebrews 9:27: For it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment.
Until then, we are to glorify God as we can. For most people, in addition to overt worship, that will include education, work, marriage, family. For some, all or part of this is not possible. And there are always the many who die in early life or middle age.
It's obvious that you're a' trolling, and I'm not going to waste any more time on this.
I am no troll, I really do think it is an issue to choose death if it becomes optional. I mean, it basically breaks the Bible: if this comes to exist this would mean there is no appointed death because death would become a choice. It is one thing to face your inevitable death, but if death is not inevitable, if you actually have to choose death for it to actually happen, what then? It resembles jumping off the temple too closely for me to just say things are as simple as rejecting the immortality pill.
The only way to fully glorified and receive a new body and eternal life is to die physically because these bodies are corrupted . Immortality in the flesh is a trap of the devil.
Isn't this the exact same thing as jumping off the tower? And if this is so, don't you have to reject all of medicine, which is simply the effort to save this corrupted body?
If Jesus does not condemn medicine, then Jesus does not condemn the immortality pill. If the only way to receive eternal life is with the death of our bodies as the parent commenter said, then it makes no sense to attempt to cure lethal diseases. Why run away from eternal life?
Treating our sicknesses to prolong our service and love of others here is good. Also our friends, neighbors, family value our presence, it’s not all about what’s best for us. We will pass through death soon enough. In a blink of an eye I reached my sixties. Paul directly referred to the why not just die and go to Jesus as it is a better deal concept in Philippians 1:21-25 and his conclusion was it’s better for him to stay to love and be loved for the time being.
There is no immortality pill so this is all theoretical anyway and idle talk. It is worse than foolish to boast about how you would smile through your crucifixion.
I respect your right to take the pill . But the Bible says that God allotted man a lifetime of 120 years. This world is like a testing ground. It’s not our permanent home.
No, I wouldn't say that at all. Trying to live forever is not the same thing as treating sickness or pain. God will decide when it's my time to go, but that doesn't mean I will try to speed up the date. The thing is our souls are immortal already. The question is where our soul will speed eternity after our bodies die.
If aging becomes treatable, it is a sickness. Actually, the only reason we don't see it as a sickness is that it has no treatment yet. Isn't letting yourself die if the option to live is available speeding up the date by quite a lot?
Ever read Tuck Everlasting?