The Parable of the Unjust Blogger

Fear and Time

I'm sorry it's been a while. I've been reading a lot though so if we are to believe the way these things are supposed to work I should be smarter and have more insightful things to say.

In “Ordet”, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955, the middle son Johannes famously has “read Kierkegaard and gone insane”. Pretty good flick

Except when concerning the pragmatic and immediate threat of physical pain, as a general rule of thumb, most of the things we fear “in the future” are things that have already happened. We “fear” the future totalitarian dystopia of total surveillance and economic slavery, and think the new world order is “always only almost” here, never quite getting there, but it’s always riiiiiight about to happen - but we can avoid it if we just start one more podcast and dedicate our time to waking up the normies and win the culture war and the battle of ideas, right at the nick of time.

No. The picture is projected into the future, but it is a picture of something that has already happened. The future is now. In fact, the apocalypse happened before you were even born. The religion of the future is an ancient thing.

What you fear is what is already the case, and when I feel frozen in terror at the thought of being a priest, that is not because I am afraid of giving up my life and hedonism and pleasures, to become one. It is because in a sense I have already become one. Practically, pragmatically. And I am trying to avoid knowing that about myself.

I fear not the thing, but the knowing.

I already live in celibacy, reading theology, and young people come to me for moral guidance, counseling, and confession. Sometimes they come to me to wrestle, and sometimes I indulge them. I live in sobriety and spend my days in reflection, and most of the time I am genuinely content - even happy. My life is better than it has been since perhaps the mid 2010’s. But when I imagine living like [I already de facto do] - I am frozen with terror. Why?

Well for one, I am really bad at it. I am doing a very bad job. I might possibly even be the worst one, worse even than the unapologetic false preachers who straight up preach literal satanism and call it doctrine. They are to an extent victims, caught up in a whirlwind bondage of confusion that, although such depravity is always chosen and people go in willingly - they are now powerless to escape by their own power. And I am freer than them to act.

I scorn my duties, although I have seen and know the truth, I do not testify, but spend days in mindlessly satisfying the Will, by playing the hit autism simulator Europa Universalis 4 for a week.

When I said “I am scared shitless of Christianity”, I was referring to the fact that when you give God a finger, he takes not the entire hand, but all of you. C.S. Lewis descripes it very well in “Mere Christianity” as someone coming to God to be cured of one particular or obvious sin, but then going “hey wait a minute I just wanted to be cured of [masturbation] or [cowardice] or any one particular thing, what’s all this other stuff, I just wanted to cure this one thing and then be allowed to live otherwise”.

I came to Christianity pre-healed, pre-saved. I already stopped drinking and I made a big deal, to myself, of not wanting to be “saved” - not wanting to be a stereotype or cliche, or even a type. A fear of a loss of identity, agency. So I stopped drinking and some minor sexual perversions, and came to God going “hey man, look, I already solved all that stuff so don’t mind me, if I could just scoot in here and have my cake and eat it too that would be great. I quit drinking but it didn’t actually make me feel much better, and I would maybe like, please, to have some of the peace and contentment, please, sir.”

And that’s not how it works. God himself says more is expected of me because more was given to me.

The question is not “how do I avoid becoming a priest” - or “saved” or “a cliche”, and it’s not even “do I want to be, do i chose either or?”. It's, okay, now I am a priest, against my wishes. What do I do about it?

I am a bad priest, possibly the worst. Okay, what do I do about it? People depend on me whether I like it or not, and letting them down is not humility.

People write me all kinds of things, and all kind of people too. From the long, elaborate letters from young men, long back and forth discussions with young men who need to be taken seriously, to what I can only describe politely as simple people, who wanted to let me know that my advice of “running around and having fun” changed their life. To advice on interpreting the bible.

I’ve always been happy to opine on pretty much any subject but bible interpretation fills me with the aforementioned terror. Someone a while back wrote me to ask about the parable of the unjust steward. It’s a real tough cookie. At the time I didn’t have a good answer for her.

Continuing my own dialogue with God from earlier.

God: “Dude I put you in charge of like 20 guys and you're capable of much more, and you're shirking your duty wtf”

Me “I'm afraid if I do a good job you'll promote me and give me a bigger more important job, and I was really hoping that I could just sort of skirt on my previous accomplishment of “not being a total degenerate” and get all of the grace while not having to do any sort of work please”

God: Alright, then you’re fired, nerd.

That’s my interpretation of the unjust steward. It is a parable about how I, personally, should write more, and not waste my (Master’s) gifts, because if I keep being lazy, I will have to give away everything I have, because, to those who have, more will be given and to those who have not, they shall lose even that which they have. th.